Goodnight Horses Chapter One: Solids

I realised it’s now over ten years since I started writing my completed but unpublished novel Goodnight Horses. If you want to read the full novel it’s available here at authonomy or here’s a taster, the first chapter. Read it, share it, publish it! (IF you’re a publisher…)

It’s Monday afternoon; I am in my psychotherapist’s office. I am telling her about December 2002, when I could see the black shadow spirit forms of animals walking around near me, at least once everyday.  I don’t know if she believes me, but I’m trying to explain to her that I understand the difference between what I see and what I think I see; I understand that perception is perception no matter what so it doesn’t really make any difference whether what I saw was real to anyone else. I want to tell her that trying to define between reality and perceived reality is like pulling your turd apart and trying to see which bit was ice cream and which was pot noodle. I don’t tell her this because I don’t want to appear vulgar in front of her: she is very attractive and this makes me censor certain subject areas, words, feelings. I believe she is Hindu, and her surname means “erect penis”, as well as being a general term for divine power. A creative force, pro-generative.

I, however, do not feel creative, or powerful, or generative in any way. I feel less and less of all things as time goes on. I do not know how long I have been coming here, and have no concept of how long I will keep coming. My mind might as well be wiped blank between each weekly session. I retain no memory of what I talk about, and feel like I start over from a different point with different problems every time. I don’t know if this is my fault, or her fault, or no-one’s fault. I no longer feel degrees of blame, or measurements of good or bad, in relation to myself. I am numbed, and I am like this because it feels like I have been broken so many times that all that remains is the glue that I tried to stick myself back together with.

I talk for a while about my relationships with women, or the current lack thereof. I try to explain that I cannot trust them anymore, because I feel as if they are like everybody else in the world, trapped in a self inflicted delusory state, talking endlessly about craving affection, emotion, closeness, openness, when all they really desire is empty gestures which suggest to them that these concepts may exist and apply to them. They are scared and lonely, and try not to be by attempting to empower themselves with words or excuses. Men and women function much the same as they have always done, but now each one has learnt to excuse their tired, repetitive weaknesses with hollow words and stock phrases. They believe now that strength can come from verisimilitude, but this misses the important point; strength is not the thing. Despair should be the thing that everyone accepts and treasures as the only hope for the future. Do not fool yourself that you can ever find the thing that you only imagine you are looking for; instead, strive to be inadequate.

Let your ego shatter into the fragments that make it easier to live in a world where people’s main concerns are the personal lives of strangers. It is January 2004, and tens of thousands of Americans continue to abdicate their personal moral responsibility in favour of following the orders of a few multi-millionaires who are proven, obvious and clumsy liars. The rest of the world allows this to happen, as they are more concerned when a fat woman wins a television singing contest, or when a man says the word “cunt” on television than they are when men, women and children are ripped apart by pieces of metal fired from projectile weapons paid for with percentages of their earnings.

It is late January, and memories turn over quickly like freshly tilled soil. Not so long ago the British public salivated daily over the details of the deaths of two children, but they soon forgot and moved on to celebrities living on a small space of land. At the start of the month the government whitewashed itself at the cost of further media freedom (what little there was), but once the news is finished on television, something else follows it, and our minds are whitewashed too, ready for something else to shock them for a couple of days. Liars and cowards run our lives and spit and lie in our faces every single day and we don’t care. In fact we act as if we are grateful for it.

I leave my psychotherapist appointment. Fifty minutes into every session I am just building up to some point of possible catharsis, only to be met with the phrase “we have to leave it there”. I will start over again next week. I am a goldfish receiving mental health treatment for problems that may or may not exist. I think I’ve paid enough taxes by now to compensate for this.

It’s cold outside, having recently snowed. My flatmate commented on how much nicer the city looks under snow, but by now it’s just a filthy, pollution stained mess of mush and hard ice. Frozen water and grit, white and black mixed at such a minute level that it’s difficult to distinguish. I live in a large city in the north, a mostly dull and stupid place, run by a corrupt and lazy local government, filled with mostly dull and stupid people. Hardly anyone is capable of seeing outside of themselves. I would move, but do not know where to, and don’t really understand why. I am dull and stupid too.

I walk into town, with my iPod on shuffle. I am halfway through putting all of my music collection on there, and have about 2000 and some songs on it. I do not listen to songs in full, but spend my time listening to the first ten seconds until I recognise them, and decide I am not in the mood for that particular song and skip forward. This way once my full collection is on there I will never have to listen to a full song again, whilst still having the comfort of an eclectic and impressive mix of music to hand at all times. The actual act of burning all my compact discs to my PC hard drive, and then converting them to iTunes is more pleasurable. I enjoy  relentless and repetitive tasks that make me feel I am reaching towards a goal or conclusion. For the last few years the purchasing of items has been more pleasurable than their retention and use. This has led to an escalation in debt, which worries me constantly, a worry only helped by the purchase of more items. I believe this can be classified as being trapped in a “vicious circle”.

I check my watch, and it is 12:12pm. I am hungry, and I’m craving sugar. I eat food and drink liquids, all the while paranoid that I am being watched and laughed at by young girls. If they are unattractive young girls, the paranoia is less acute. I have not been sleeping well, and this combined with the sugary food and liquid and the post-psychotherapy down state makes me  feel more and more uneasy. I start sweating, even though the temperature is very very low, and there is a damp patch at my right temple that the wind chills. A long line of cold then cuts down my face, past the corner of my eye, and I self-consciously wipe it away, feeling like people will think I am wiping away a tear. I would like to stop them individually, grasping their shoulders and staring them hard in the eye telling them that this is certainly not the case as I am unable to cry and have been for some time. I bury my fear, hostility, guilt and sense of rejection deep down inside, and the anti-depressant medication helps maintain a wall of numbness around it. On the odd occasion any of this is released I am completely alone with no fear of being discovered, and it is let out in horrid sobbing chunks of pain and self-pity that feel like pieces of meat and ligament wrenched from a still living thing. It is akin to the reaction of a tired child refused a treat in a supermarket, suddenly crying in that awful, heartbreaking way they do. Whenever I see children actually doing that, I always want to punch their parents in the face and hug the child until they feel okay again.

I spend fruitless amounts of time wandering around the city centre. I purchase some items which may or may not ease the passage of time until my eventual death, and head home, feeling a desperation and tiredness which will only be cured by lying still. A homeless man in front of me suddenly blocks my way, and begins to sing “Get Happy” in a way I imagine Judy Garland would have at 4:00am in the morning after an unsuccessful suicide bid. He dances a little jig, which helps to free up his stench of dirt and failure, so it can waft over me, filling me with an urge to puke. I am used to this happening. Years ago a friend called me the “weird magnet” due to the ridiculous number of times that I was followed or confronted by odd or “mentally ill” people, usually shouting or singing, or dancing, or occasionally urinating or masturbating. I have gotten used to it, and it still happens regularly. I just presume that like finds like.

It is now the next day, and I am sat at work. I check the time. By the clock on my telephone it is 2:21pm, by the one on my mobile phone (what the Americans refer to as a ‘cell’ phone) it is 2:22pm, and by the incoming call display on the wall it is 2:23pm. I sit uncomfortably with my legs crossed in what I think is some kind of clumsy Yogic position, which is no mean feat on a cheap office swivel chair. I have short legs. I wish my legs were about 2 inches longer. I think this would make me happier.

I am reading websites. They are mainly conspiracy websites, detailing what people believe to be the hidden reasons for events in the world, or the hidden reasons for upcoming events which will end the world. A while ago I chose to stop believing anything in particular, as I considered it only stopped me from learning. This is a difficult task, especially when you are a clinically depressed hypochondriac paranoid with a crippling fear of death and change. However, over time it has become easier to practice, and I now feel that I can retain information about a wider array of subjects than before, and have become increasingly adept at dismantling people’s arguments when they are based on self-delusory information. This covers virtually every belief in the world, so I find myself doing this a lot.

Reading the websites causes me anxiety. Although I am determined not to believe the contents, there is a period of absorption in which I initially do, and I take on board personally all of the worries associated with having that belief. So far today I have worried about:

The continued military occupation of Iraq, the constitutional change to ban gay marriage in the US, the next general election in the UK, male hair loss, cancer, the possibility that Jupiter may ignite and become a small star, the possibility that Planet X may be heading back into the path of the Earth, the price of compact discs, a possible Zionist conspiracy which may or may not rule the world, the possibility that George Bush has Osama bin Laden secreted away in order to produce him shortly before the US presidential election in November in order to ensure victory, the asylum process, unemployment, the extinction of the cod, Jade Goody’s health, music, whether I should go forward with my plans to be tattooed, whether I should cut my thinning hair off or dye it blond, whether to contact my ex-girlfriend, whether I will ever have sex again, my seeming numbness to personal interaction, who will play Superman in the upcoming Warner Brother’s film, missing television programmes, updating my iPod, winning/not winning the lottery, the death of JFK, the death of RFK, the death of Martin Luther King, the death of John Lennon, the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, the thought that millions of Catholics in the world believe the word of an old man with Parkinson’s disease, advanced senility and the inability to stop himself shitting his own pants is the infallible conduit of the immortal spirit who created the Universe, library funding, missing out on tickets for Morrissey’s upcoming Manchester gig, George Lazenby only getting to do one Bond movie, the possibility that the end of times may actually happen as recounted in religious scripture, the holes in all my socks, owning too many items, killing myself, wishing I’d never been born, the purchase of the Muppets by the Disney corporation, drinking too much Coca-Cola, the Sars virus, avian flu, the death of the actor who played Father Ted and the death of Natalie Woods aboard a yacht carrying herself, Christopher Walken and Robert Wagner.

Well, technically, she was not on the yacht when she died, but aboard a dinghy, according to the coroner. This has all been since I started work at 10:30 am. I am currently reading a new conspiracy site that wants me to believe that the Soviet Union never really went away, and that since 1990 it has been an underground organisation which will soon team with communist China in an attempt to destroy America and the UK, and take over all of Europe. The author of this site identifies the American Empire as Faction One, the supposed free-world. The hidden Soviet Union and its many allies make-up Faction Two. They fear that these two will destroy all of us if unchecked, but I can see no real way of stopping then if this is true. I wonder if there is a Faction Three; if so the author may not want the fact to interfere with his very polarised view of the world as he sees it. I wonder for a while what a third faction would be; maybe the Knights Templar, or the Bavarian Illumaniti, or maybe a coalition of Third World countries plotting to turn the world upside down. Soon I move on to a website containing stories of supernatural and miraculous happenings, authored by right-wing Christian Americans. One tale is about a man at large in the world who can change reality with a word. He is reported to have changed a man in Kansas into the petals of a flower.

It is now the weekend and I am drunk. I am in a gay bar, with my female friend who I shall call Friend. We have been close friends for years, although she is over ten years younger. There is also her girlfriend, who I will call Her Girlfriend, who is closer to my age, and another girl who I will call Tease, because she is 17, sexy and flirty and messing up Friend’s mind by constantly blowing hot and cold. Friend and Her Girlfriend recently split and got back together, and Tease was there all along, a subversive element. There are some more people with us too, friends of the others.

All night long I have felt increasingly frightened and panicky. I can sense something bad coming, some event which will be painful and unpleasant. I cannot sense whether this will happen to me or to someone else, but the feeling is smothering and overwhelming, and being drunk both numbs it and at the same time heightens it. I am talking and laughing, and I am enjoying myself as if in a normal fashion, but the shadow of the feeling is always there. There is also the added sexual tension between Friend and Tease, and a new one building between Her Girlfriend and Tease. Still further I can feel more tension between myself and Tease, though cannot identify why. I am attracted to all the girls I am with, though have recently been ambivalent to pursuing any sort of relationship with any girl. And besides, they are all lesbian or at the least mostly lesbian. It is nice to be in a gay club and not worry that girls are creeped out by me as I am in mixed clubs. And I get to stare at women kissing and touching other women. It is an embarrassing and obvious fact that this is sexually arousing for most heterosexual men, usually in a way that leads to high-fiving between friends. I am hopefully more subdued and subtle.

Now more time has passed. I have recently drunk some awful mix of Aftershock and the burning sensation in my mouth matches the burning sensation I already had in my throat from drinking cheap pissy lager. I look out the window at the bright and clear half moon in the flawless winter sky, framed by bright dots. The feeling truly overwhelms me now, and I lean in to tell Friend about it. I tell her that whatever was going to happen is happening now. At the same time Her Girlfriend suddenly begins freaking out, saying that she does not think we should remain in this place, and displays paranoid and depressive feelings. I look at my watch, and the time is 23:27. I have Friend’s mobile phone in my pocket, and when I pull that out the time on it is 23:23pm. The feeling washes over me and passes. I tell myself I am full of shit.

Even more time has passed now, and I am standing on the dance-floor, watching as Friend, Girlfriend and Tease dance on a small podium, gyrating against each other around a metal pole. The sexual tension is so thick now that to cut through it you’d need one of those £19.99 super sharp knives they sell on TV which can allegedly cut through a soda pop can, or, if you wish, one of your own shoes. Across from them, three topless gay men do the same on the opposite platform. It is hot, and broken glass crunches under my feet. Drunkenness ebbs and flows, and I have the urge to leave. Soon we all do, and I am happy when the cold air can be felt all over my bare skin. The three girls leave in a taxi, and the next day I will be regaled with stories from all 3 of the drunken, stoned threesome that ensued. All three accounts vary wildly in detail and emotion, and I sense someone in the future carving trouble out of the situation with one of those soda pop can knives.

By now I am walking home alone. Along the way I walk past the University campus, and I watch many physically and culturally similar people acting in very similar ways. I pause when I find some guys loudly questioning a timid Chinese student. I am worried that there will be violence, and hang around to make sure there is not, but at a safe distance of course. Have no doubt that I am as much a physical as I am an emotional coward. Whilst I stand there a guy in his early twenties approaches me with his hand outstretched, saying ‘Put it there mate’. He has that look in his eyes of someone who finds themselves funny because they can humiliate others. I just stare at him. He now says ‘Okay, be like that, you’ll regret it in the morning’. And begins to walk off. I leap forward and grab the hair on the back of his head, and he lurches back, legs splaying underneath him. I slam his head into the flagstone floor and kick the small of his back, making him scream like a girl. I then kneel down and begin punching him in the face until bubbling blood covers him and drenches my knuckles. I am aware that I am growling so hard that my throat is constricting and cramping painfully.

I don’t do this at all. I watch him walk away, then look back to see if the Chinese student is okay. A homeless guy comes rushing up to me with a paper cup that looks like it’s had the edges chewed off. He shouts ‘You! You!’ and the sense of dread from earlier rushes up my spine in a wide straight line of prickling cold. ‘We only appear solid because we are interacting with other objects of similar density!’ he cries.

NEW WRITING IN LEEDS DEBACLE

I have a piece of writing about life in Texas in what is sadly the last issue of the Leeds Debacle. Find it here: http://issuu.com/thedebacle/docs/debacle17/

TEXAS, BY GOD PART TWO: LITTLE THINGS, BIG THINGS

Hi. I’m Mason and I lived in Leeds for over twenty years, mostly on my own with a cat. Now I live in San Antonio, Texas, married to a native Texan and have three step children, three dogs and a one eyed kitten. Life is very different here in America and this is what I’ll be writing about.

Back in Leeds it used to be “That’s Asda price!” (ass slap). Or humming the Morrisonstheme tune. Or getting some annoying dance track or sincere indie pop song stuck in my head. Now it’s “We are Farmers! Dum de dum dum dum!”. Or “Ooh, Billy Bob!”. Or “DQ, this is the stop sign for Tex-asss!”. One year in and I can hardly remember any British adverts (hence the out-dated Asda ass slapping reference). My head is full of the Geico gecko, how 15 minutes can save you 15% or more on car insurance. Everybody knows that. Floods of localised car adverts for local dealers. Fast food ads like you wouldn’t believe, torrents of them. One morning the local news channel did a feature article on the return of a certain burger to a certain fast food joint. Right after telling us about a local shooting. There’s several of those every night.

It’s the little things. They accumulate and become big things. When you first get to America it’s so familiar that you’re initially fooled into thinking it’s just an extension of Britain, just slightly skewed from life ‘back home’. I’d traveled here several times before moving here, having experienced Los Angeles, Austin and San Antonio as well as a dull stay in Eldorado, Kansas, one of the flattest, dullest places I’d seen. When arriving in Lockhart, Texas back in 1996, where my brother was living at the time, a small town outside of Austin, I immediately remarked how it seemed so familiar that I felt I was living in a movie I’d seen. I was. Lockhart had been the main location for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. I’d seen all the streets before.

So you get here and it feels somewhat like home. Like good old blighty. Except people are much more polite. The first time someone tells you to have a nice day you chuckle to yourself a little and imagine that it’s just what they say, that they don’t mean it, especially staff in stores. Then it dawns on you that they are actually sincere. And that that’s what most people are like that you encounter. When I traveled to San Antonio in March 2013 I was here for just two weeks, but when I flew back into Heathrow I was stunned by how miserable, grumpy, impolite and insular everyone seemed. Workers at the airport seemed like they were just grinding their way through their day, resentful of being there. Travelers were rushed, silent, fuming. I has the oddest feeling that I hadn’t come home, that I’d actually just left home, where I’d been welcomed, loved and received with a strangely sincere kindness that just seemed missing in Britain.

Now to some extent I miss that grumpiness. Occasionally we’ll be in a store (not a shop, a store!) and a member of staff will be dismissive, grumpy or downright hostile. My American family members can’t help but comment, it’s such an unusual experience. I’ll be quietly smiling to myself, relishing the experience, feeling a strange little sense of superiority that I can appreciate something negative and somehow enjoy it. The liberal, left-leaning working class hero in me wants some people to be like this. It’s then that I feel weird for actually appreciating how polite the staff at Walmart have been; why should they be happy and polite when they work for an evil multinational famous for locking staff inside their buildings overnight to keep them working and pay some stuff such low wages that they have to claim food stamps to survive? Then the politeness and perfect manners seem like they must be forced, purely out of fear of losing their livelihood.

Little things; getting your bags packed for you at HEB (my new Morrisons) by someone addressing you as ‘Sir’. That continues to freak me out. Firstly, I cannot stand being called ‘sir’. I’m not a sir. And I’ve been putting objects into carrier bags for over 40 years now. It’s not really difficult. The sense of entitlement that has led to Americans assuming that someone else should be packing their bags at the check-out (not the till) and addressing them as if they are socially higher than the person ‘serving’ them worries me. There’s a softly arrogant assumption in the situation – we deserve to be served. It’s how it should be. That people shouldn’t even keep their jobs if they can’t keep up that level of service. More than half the workforce in British shops would have to be sacked if you applied that attitude to Britain.

Drive-thru banks. (Not through – ‘thru’). These freaked me out. You pull up, you pop your cheque and a deposit slip into a plastic tube and then you put it in a slot where it whizzes up into the air in a manner reminiscent of the messaging system in the Coen brother’s Hudsucker Proxy. A screen come to life and someone from inside the building to the side of the drive-thru lanes appears to tell you that they won’t be a minute. Sir. Madam. It feels oddly futuristic in a way that 1950’s short films about life in the 21^st Century made you feel. But at the same time it’s so mundane and normal for Americans it loses it’s lustre quickly. There’s a wide lane for big old vehicles. Here in Texas that’s mainly big pickup trucks. That’s flatbed trucks with an extra wide base. I think I expected lots of humvees driving around, given Texas’ propensity for doing things big and the Republican domination of the state and it’s mindset. Nope. Hardly seen any. Big trucks, yes, but mainly because they’re essential. It’s a big old wide open place. There’s big yards and big backyards in almost every house. How are you gonna landscape your garden or till your ground without a truck to carry what you need in? American garages are filled with tools. Lawnmowers. Strimmers. Chainsaws. Table saws. Air Compressors. Hoes. Spades. Multiple sizes of hoes and spades. Rakes. Ground tampers. Power generators. For a working class boy who mainly lived in tiny back to back houses or flats in converted Victorian buildings this seemed initially overwhelmingly decadent. Growing up I had friends in the more middle-class parts of town. They had garages. They had lawnmowers. They had sheds and tools. It seemed amazing. They must be rich! They weren’t of course, they just weren’t as poor as we were. Here in the suburbs, not the comfortably well off suburbs I guess, just lower middle class suburbs, we have all those things that those “posh” friends’ families had back then and I guess it’s a continual source of amusement that I’m slightly incredulous at this astonishing wealth of objects. I spend so much time in the garage where I’ve constructed my own workbench over a couple of old restored cabinets in order to buy cheap furniture and restore it. Every time I go out there and press the button that starts the automatic garage door I’m still a little amazed that this is in MY garage. Well, it’s a rented house but you get the idea. This is where I go, where I sit and work with a fan blowing on me whilst the humidity makes me sweat despite it, with an audiobook playing from my iPod. I used to do the same thing back in Leeds but then it meant having a living room (and kitchenette) covered in a thin layer of sawdust and no room to sit down and watch TV.

Oh, and the size of the house! Apparently this is a smallish house, only two bathrooms and four bedrooms. My old flat could fit in the dining room/front room. The dogs can run in here. When I grew up in Darwen, Lancashire in the 70’s we didn’t even have a toilet in the house. It was like living in a black and white film from the 40’s. In 1984 we got an indoor toilet and a telephone. Shame we still had a sheet of ice on the inside of our bedroom window most of the year round. I guess this upbringing has always made me ultra aware of my working class-ness. I felt somehow unworthy of having ‘nice things’. I think I was scared of it for a long time. On the good side it also made me very, very appreciative of having anything good. Still today it makes me unusually aware of how lucky I am to be here, living in a nice, big house, the sun shining, lots of food in the cupboard, my garage workshop there at any time, supportive, loving family always there looking after me. But I’m constantly reminded by all the little things that I’m in a foreign county, in some ways a decadent, comfortable country not very aware of it’s own level of comfort. I worry about the sense of entitlement that Americans are given to feel and how this is fueled by a sincerity that in turn is informed by a simple principle; you make more money if customers are made to feel happy. That has somehow become epidemic, perhaps to a point where this country whose dream is based on equality has organised a definite system of subservience not even based purely on class. Everybody in business visible to the public has to put on that air of politeness, to make the customer feel that it is their right, their born entitlement to receive service, to have the highest service. The only people that don’t have to do this I guess are the people not in the public eye, anyone rich enough to stay in their own office or home and not have to deal with the public.

So, little things. Different ad jingles in my head. Big, wide roads. Strange looking traffic lights dangling from overhead wires. The pavement is different. It’s a sidewalk. Petrol stations are gas stations. Sweets are candy. Pop is soda. Tuesday is ‘toosday’. Pants are ‘py-ants’. I swerve between pronouncing garage as ‘ga-ridge’ to ‘ga-raj’. I can’t roll my own cigarettes because gas stations don’t sell filters. There is so much that is different here, I could go on page after page making lists of the little things and how they add up to the big things, the things that really separate out America from it’s ancestor Britain. I always felt a little odd and out of place back there, here it’s no big deal, I’m supposed to be odd and out of place. I have a funny voice here. I find it hard to order water in restaurants. I have to as for ‘warder’. But despite all the differences, little and big, it feels like home, more and more. Day after day, month after month I slip into being more and more comfortable with my new life. The differences are never going to go away, but I find myself forgetting little things about life in Britain as time passes. I found the small amount of British coins I arrived here with the other week. Man, did those pound coins look fake and weird. I am being acclimatised (that should be acclimatized), drawn in, assimilated into a life that is so similar to what I knew and so strange at the same time that it sometimes feels like a dream or some odd long term deja vu. But it’s a nice dream.

Goodnight Horses: My full novel available to download and read for free

My novel Goodnight Horses, completed about 3 years ago now, is available to read in full online or download in full on the writing website Authonomy.  You can put it on a phone, tablet or ereader. Full link here https://www.authonomy.com/user/411fc8d2-393a-4f3b-8205-25929d363198/

Authonomy is a site for new writers to present material. Unpublished works will be reviewed by Harper Collins editors if enough people read them, so please, please share this info with as many people as you know so I can start getting the book known and distributed. If enough people sign up and read I could well be published by one of the world’s biggest publishers. Also there’s lots of great work on Authonomy to check out apart from Goodnight Horses, so it’s well worth checking it out.

Read and enjoy!

Watch “Dean and the Lost Souls – Wreckin Crew” on YouTube

Dean and the Lost Souls – Wreckin Crew: http://youtu.be/__XX4ZkjJ2Q

LEEDS DEBACLE 16 TEXAS, BY GOD:POLITICS

I have a two page article in the new Leeds Debacle magazine, right here.

MARGIE SCHOEDINGER REDUX

Four years ago I wrote a blog piece about a woman called Margie Schoedinger

THE LONELY GRAVE OF MARGIE SCHOEDINGER

. it has had the most views of anything I have ever written on my blog (monkeytwohands.wordpress.com). Every single day someone reads that article. When you type the name Margie Schoedinger into Google I’m now one of the top six results. There’s certainly more articles and more information online about this sad case than there was four years ago, but still when you mention the name Margie Schoedinger to anyone you’ll mostly just get a puzzled look. Margie Schoedinger filed charges against the then President George W. Bush claiming he had raped her and was then found dead of a shotgun blast a few months later. This was deemed to be self-inflicted. The article I wrote examined why exactly the whole story never made national news, only cropping up on a few independent news sites.

I wrote the article not to get into a conspiracy based discussion about whether this woman was killed because of allegations she made, but because I couldn’t understand why no-one had heard of her, why no mainstream news agency thought that a woman filing rape charges against an incumbent President was newsworthy, especially considering the reaction to the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Now I’m living in Texas I’m exposed full blast to American radio and television news commentators. The loudest (sometimes literally) are the right-wing shock jocks, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Joe Pags, Dennis Prager and more. They prefer the term conservative to right-wing, thought they don’t flinch at the term. They speak of freedom, liberty, patriotism and God in large doses. They believe, generally, that there is a left-wing conspiracy, certainly within media, to destroy freedom, liberty and Christianity. They think that the media is literally swamped with left-wing bias and that bias lies and cheats to aid the incumbent President, Barack Obama get away with dismantling the United States into some sort of Godless, Communist dictatorship. Hell, for all I know this might be happening, but it’s more obvious to them than me.

What I do see is a political system where the two parties (third parties are vilified and ignored for the most part) are virtually identical in policy despite being miles apart in rhetoric. I see political campaigns for two separate sides paid for by the same corporations, guaranteeing that whoever gets into office is paid for already. I see a population that gets angrier and angrier about the declining state of their country but can’t actually be bothered to get off their ever widening asses to vote for either side.

I’m no fan of Barack Obama. He’s a man who sought the highest office and as such is not to be trusted. I don’t believe that you can reach any high political office without being horribly morally compromised when the political world is so corrupt already. Corporations have more legal rights than individuals and they also have the money to access and influence politicians. So that’s what happens. But, that withstanding, the reason I wrote the piece about Margie Schoedinger four years ago was because of the imbalance it spoke to me of. A President of the United States is accused of rape by a woman who soon after is found dead from a gunshot. If the media is irretrievably swamped by a left-wing bias, why did those pesky commie subversives not go to town on the Schoedinger story, which could at least have dangerously smeared Bush’s reputation?

Obama is the incumbent President and boy does he get ranted about. Most people I meet in person hate him and hate is a strong word. I hear a lot of racist terms used against him, which comes across as a very ugly, unnecessary thing. The shock jocks stop short of racist epithets but call him all sorts of names, they disagree with everything he has ever done or will do, no matter what. It feels like he could shake someone’s hand and wish them a happy birthday and this would be proof of his plot to destroy the United States and enslave us all. The insults don’t always follow logic. The conspiracy theories about his place of birth rattle on irregardless of lack of material evidence and he regularly gets accused of being a Muslim. At the same time they are all convinced he is a Communist. How someone can be a godless communist who also submits to the will of God they don’t explain. Recently Obama was heavily criticized regarding Bowe Bergdahl, a soldier released from captivity in Afghanistan in exchange for the release of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. I’m not going to get into the muddy mire of whether Bergdahl was a deserter, a traitor or turncoat – oh, go on then, I will. If he defected to the Taliban as many claim, why did he come home? Surely if he agreed with them and wanted to help them take down America, he would have been fighting openly on their side by now, which would have been a major P.R. coup for the Taliban. The conservative shock jocks are enjoying turning this into a season of Homeland however, knowing that their audience is more comfortable with dealing with fiction rather than reality.

Anyway, I was trying to make a point somewhere in here. The news media (despite being Obama loving communist toadies) are giving President Obama hell for negotiating with terrorists. This is the point that brings us back to Margie Schoedinger – what you are happy to discuss or acknowledge, what you are happy to let slide by and ignore. Ronald Reagan negotiated with terrorists. He even traded weapons for hostages. And admitted it, in his diaries and in an open broadcast to the American people. Details here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/01/1303690/-Ronald-Reagan-the-President-who-really-negotiated-with-terrorists#

When you mention this fact, most Americans simply either won’t believe it or will dismiss it or even justify it. Reagan is held in god-like esteem, a great faultless President who oversaw a golden age. If Reagan did it, then it wasn’t even a bad thing. If Obama does it, then it is a bad thing. And vice-versa depending on where you stand. It is this that epitomizes American political beliefs in America – the embattled entrenched battle between Democrat and Republican is seen as a battle between the forces of good and evil, again, depending of course on which side you’re on. It is not a reflection of the state of politics in America; e recent poll of republican voters gave a massive indication that the republican party is simply ignoring what it’s supporters believe in and forging ahead with more right-wing policies influenced by powerful individuals withing the party.

For the most part politics in America is a stagnant morass in which both parties are happy to wallow as long as they can take care of their own and take advantage of the country and it’s citizens to further personal or professional goals. But it is the perception of political belief in America as a black and battle of absolutes that allows the parties (and their corporate backers) to get away with this exploitation of the country and to a larger extent many parts of the world. As long as they can distract American citizens with this fake conflict, as they distract them with the larger overseas enemy of choice (whoever it is at the time) then they can carry on just as they like whilst the average American wastes his or her energy getting worked up by a conflict that the people involved in don’t even really care about.

This is what I dislike about the shock jocks so much – they trade on fear and anger and negativity and concentrate people’s attention on the distraction, not the real conflict or problem. They use very obvious control techniques – slow voicing, repeated phrases, dramatic pauses, patriotic keywords. They become furious with the actions of one President whilst ignoring the fact that the one before did exactly the same or much worse. If people don’t agree with them they denounce them as unpatriotic or simply naive. And it works on people. I gave a family friend here a link to my original Margie Schoedinger article and after he read it he unfriended me on Facebook (the modern equivalent of being ex-communicated) and told my father-in-law that I was a Communist. A Communist! That’s ridiculous. I’m a strict Marxist-Leninist with a slant towards the ideas of Kropotkin. I’m joking!! Please don’t witch-hunt me.

The CIA has a term, ‘slides’ (sometimes referred to as ‘slide response’), which is “a conditioned type of response which dead-ends a person’s thinking, and terminates debate or examination of the topic.” (Fritz Springmeier). It helps governments distract people from discussing subjects or events which they don’t want discussed. Conspiracy investigators will be familiar with the term as it was originally used to undermine any investigation of events that governments had conspired in – that covers virtually any government action agreed on in a closed meeting, which is the majority.

Is there a lesson to take from all this? If you’re like me and get angry at the radio and start ranting and getting angry about the topics on discussion and those discussing them, remind yourself that you’re getting angry at the wrong people. The next time someone brings up a subject which you feel the need to ridicule or ignore, remember that could be your slide response, that could be an indication that you’re not deciding for yourself what to think or even what to think about. Just to be sure, take a deep breath, stand back from your own opinions and let the world in to give you some perspective. And if you’re going to judge one person/country/political parties actions, at least have the decency to judge on equal terms.

HERE FOLLOWS THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ON MARGIE SCHOEDINGER FROM MAY 4TH 2010, WRITTEN JUST BEFORE THE GENERAL ELECTION IN BRITAIN THAT GAVE US THE COALITION OF CONSERVATIVE AND LIBERAL-DEMOCRAT. SOME OF THE LINKS IN THIS ARTICLE, WHILST ALL BEING FUNCTIONAL THE DAY I WROTE IT, NO LONGER LINK TO VALID WEB PAGES.

As the most important British General Election since the last one nears I’d like to remind myself and others about how exactly this world works under the current system(s) of government prevalent in the Western Hemisphere. There is one person’s name that illustrates how things work more than any other that springs to mind. You will probably have never heard of it before.

Margie Schoedinger. She died aged 38 of a gunshot wound to the head in Missouri City, a suburb of the American city of Houston on the 22^nd September 2003. You can check that fact here: http://bit.ly/8ZrhA3, that’s the Fort Bend County public records. Not much detail, sorry. So have you ever heard of Margie Schoedinger?

I bet you’ve heard of Monica Lewinsky. She is famous for having President Clinton shove a cigar up her vagina and for performing fellatio on him and getting his semen on her dress. Type Monica Lewinsky into Google and you get 662,000 results. Her Wikipedia entry is substantial and heavily referenced. The Starr Report that investigated her relationship to President Clinton led to his impeachment. That cigar that went up her nearly brought down the head of the most powerful nation in the world. The mainstream American press and numerous right wing commentators fed on the story for months.

Type Margie Schoedinger into Google. You’ll only get 3,550 results and when I first heard her name it was just dozens. You won’t find any search results that lead back to any major news networks, certainly not Fox, CNN etc. Her Wikipedia entry is four sentences long. From that entry http://bit.ly/17GkZc you can see why some people might think she’d be better known. She filed charges of rape and physical abuse against an incumbent President, in this case George W. Bush. She did this in December 2002 and that is a matter of public record. I would link you to the records but for some reason Fort Bend County have now removed them from their website. I did read them fully myself, shortly after her death, which I only found out about because I was trawling through conspiracy websites whilst researching my novel Goodnight Horses.

At first I was sceptical; I’d been reading a lot of ridiculous conspiracy websites backed up by very little evidence. However, hidden amongst the ridiculous I would find real stories too; I remember reading about Abu Ghraib prison and the torture and deaths going on there at least 18 months before it was covered in the mainstream news. I remember thinking, surely this can’t be true or else the BBC would be covering it. It was all true, every horrible detail and it didn’t turn up on the BBC until a year and a half after independent journalists had been putting their lives at risk to get the story out. I do mean literally putting their lives at risk; just prior to the invasion of Iraq the US military clearly and openly stated to many independent journalists (including a bemused Kate Adie) that not only would they not safeguard any journalists unwilling to be embedded with US or UK military units but that they would in fact target them if they got “in the way”.

Anyhow, back in the USA a couple of reporters certainly not working for mainstream news companies finally took an interest in Margie Schoedinger’s story after Pravda, the Russian news service, ran the story http://bit.ly/a7SDtZ. It was run in Russia before it ever appeared in the USA. If this had been a time before the internet no one would ever have known. This piece http://bit.ly/qQqKm by Jackson Thoreau (possibly a pseudonym or so I’m led to believe) gives the best overview and deals generally with the case and its oddities and inconsistencies. This article http://bit.ly/BEr1W deals more with the lack of media scrutiny and shows that at least one British newspaper took some notice.

What’s known to be true about the case of Margie Schoedinger is that she did file charges against George W. Bush alleging that he sexually assaulted both her and her husband. She further brought charges against the Sugar Land County police force for harassment and assault. When questioned about this by journalists the Sugar Land police lied and said no charges had been filed. The journalists found the files confirming the charges. Sugar Land police did however discover that George W Bush had dated Margie when she was a minor, he did know her at one time. Margie Schoedinger did not seek publicity. She was extremely reluctant to meet or talk to journalists. She made no money from her allegations. There have been suggestions that she was mentally ill but there is no evidence of this from her reported behaviour or her history. She died from a gunshot wound to the head which the coroner judged to be self inflicted. It is very, very rare for women to choose this method for suicide. It is much more likely amongst males.

Trawl through the search results on Google. There isn’t much information about this woman. There is nothing that’s really negative or damning about her, just mostly the facts of the case as above. Most of all there is a vacuum of mainstream interest in Margie Schoedinger. I cannot say whether her allegations were true, whether she was deranged and delusional. As I said she didn’t file the charges in order to get famous and make money. Why she did and whether they were true we can’t now know as she died from a shotgun being fired into her face.

I’m not interested in whether Margie’s allegations were true. Not anymore. I’m mainly interested in the fact that almost every major news agency in the entire world ignored a story handed to them, fully backed by filed court charges, with allegations of a violent and sexual nature against the most highly placed man in the United States of America. Let’s face it, George W Bush wasn’t much out of the newspapers for his two terms in office and was always a figure of controversy, constantly attacked by the mainstream and left wing, constantly defended by the mainstream and the right wing. So why did every single major news network in America and 99% of every other news networks in the world choose to deliberately ignore the story of Margie Schoedinger, all at the same time? Because that’s when they were offered the information –  all of them at the same time, just when the charges had been filed. These are the same media outlets that a few years previously had covered the Clinton-Lewinsky story, without exception, every single day for years.

When you’re going to the polling booth this week think about Margie Schoedinger. Then think about the person and the party you’re about to vote for. Think about the media coverage you’ve seen concerning the election. Think about all the bad bits and all the good bits. Then think about the other bits you haven’t seen. That would be most of it; most of the election has happened off screen for everyone. There isn’t enough screen time and newsprint in the world to cover every single part of an election, so that’s fair enough. But think to yourself, who decided what I should see about the election, what policies I should know about, what incidents, what quotes, what people. Who decided? Someone decided that we didn’t need to know about Margie Schoedinger; well, lots of people all over the world did although I don’t know their names and probably never will. Think about that then, this week, think about the people who decide what you should think about and how you don’t even know their names. Mind you, you probably didn’t know Margie Schoedinger’s name before reading this but you do now.

MUSIC, PIXIES, DANGER, ASS CHEEKS AND MIDDLE AGE

I know that I’m 43 years old (almost 44!) and out of touch with music. Back in my teens, twenties and even thirties I kept abreast of all the major bands, knew all the new releases, absorbed all the information i thought I needed. Then, like happens to most people, it started to slip away and I lost contact with the signal. For a while it was replaced by movies, books, comic books; I’ve always felt the need to keep on the edge of at least one or more art forms and know as much as I could. Then you stop caring so much. this isn’t necessarily a bad thing; I find as I get older that instead of what I feared would happen, a slow encroaching whittling down of interests and likes, that I became capable of liking more and more things. As far as music went this meant broadening interest. I used to hate country music, now a lot of it I love. I used to hate dance music, that disappeared in the mid 90’s when I began to dance to it. Instead of hiding away from things I just started letting them in and judging them on their individual merits. When you do this a lot more information gets through.

Trouble is that this means you ARE going to lose touch, because your ability to specialise has to go with it. I used to regard specialising as a key to understanding, now I regard it as a narrowing tool. Empires fall when they slip into specialising in only one area. If you can only learn about one area of life it means you have to block out or ignore others. My late thirties were great for music – no longer tied to liking a certain type of band or genre of music I let myself loosen up. I stopped paying large amounts for tickets to see someone established and started to only go to gigs locally, mainly by heading along when invited by others. I had no idea what or who the bands were, so when they appeared and started playing I could only judge them on how good a time I was having, how well they played and how good the material seemed. It was great.

Of course you will always remain attached to certain songs, certain bands, certain periods of music. That can be a warm, nostalgic nice thing to happen, as long as it doesn’t stop you from looking elsewhere or learning to love new things. I have family members who only listen to music up to a certain date and nothing beyond unless its music performed in the exact style of the music they love from before the date they decided to appreciate. I also have family members who believe that they have eclectic taste and have not fallen prey to the ‘i’ve gotten older and I only like things before this time period or in its style’. Back in the early nineties I had a discussion with one family member who was convinced they could appreciate anything and had never fallen prey to blocking – they even berated my father who definitely had done – Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole had been the height of music for my dad and anything past that was useless; he’s watch Top of the Pops with us and say things like ‘this is rubbish, it’s just noise. So I played this family member a Pixies song, thinking he would appreciate it because he hadn’t fallen into that trap himself – he’d just told me so. It wasn’t even one of the too abrasive ones. His response was ‘that’s rubbish, it’s not music it’s just noise’.

I like the Pixies a lot. As much as I try to not have a favourite band, they’re my favourite band, in the sense that I come back to them and love them just as much now and ever. They were also one of a few key bands who saved me from the fate of only liking heavy metal, my specialism for a while. Thank you Pixies, Happy Mondays, Sonic Youth and quite a few others for that. Now I’m also one of those middle-aged guys who has a guitar and hardly ever plays it but refuses to not have one. I started playing when I was 14, got averagely good up to the age of 18, nearly got good at one point and then stopped trying to be in bands and went back to average and stayed there. I love having a guitar. I love playing. I just don’t do it very often. If I’d been destined to be a musician I would have played more, but I didn’t. I hate that I didn’t, but you can’t do everything in life and some things have to fall away. I still like playing, usually in bursts, sometimes days, sometimes weeks, sometimes even months. I’ll even start to improve occasionally. Most recently I became obsessed with the Pixies new song “What Goes Boom” and listened to and played along to it constantly. The last ten years I’ve been lazy and relied on other people transcribing songs and going online to learn them. This song was so new no one had so I had to sit down and figure it out. Easier than I’d thought after many years and also a joy to do. Then I just stood there with the song on repeat and played it to death until I didn’t any more.

Now there are more Pixies songs available, more material to like. Reviews on the whole have not been kind, mainly of the “not as good as old Pixies songs” ilk. I don’t find this. I find a band that sound as good as they have since they started. Black Francis has released a lot of material in the years since he broke the Pixies up and it has for the most part been great. I probably know more Frank Black songs on my guitar than Pixies songs. I love them and now they are the nostalgic, old songs that make me feel great. Reviews seem to miss out on this – this isn’t a band that just went away for two decades and then got bored and came back. This is one of the foremost songwriters of our time playing with his band again instead of on his own or with another. He does this for a living and nothing else. Kurt Cobain famously admitted “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was just an attempt to copy the Pixies. In the mainstream they’re virtually unknown, never mind Frank Black’s solo material, but the influence on music since the first Pixies release can’t be underestimated.

I’m listening to EP2 as I write this and I don’t know the songs very well but I’m liking them. Maybe one will grab me and obsess me and I’ll play my cheap Epiphone Les Paul to death again in my bedroom whilst the kids complain about the loud music all the while listening to One Direction. That’s another thing; suddenly thrust into parenthood I’m back into specialising again, suddenly knowing teeny pop songs on the radio, singing along to “Royals” without knowing who it’s by. (I know now, I’ve just googled it). I worry that by listening to “young” music in the “charts” that somehow I make my younger self cringe at not being on the cutting edge like I thought I once was. Then I remember it was letting go of that fear of not knowing, of not liking the right thing that really let me open up and appreciate much more music than I ever did as an angry young teen. And when you’re an angry young teen listening to music and playing guitar you’re not really that concerned with music as such, more with being cool and trying to get girls to like you. I don’t worry about either of those anymore.

Then that worries me too. Where are the angry young people expressing themselves through music? With the occupy movement so strong over the last few years and a population more and more aware of how corrupt and greedy our rulers are, where is the punk of our time? We have greater and easier access to communicate ideas than we’ve ever had, but the urgency seems to be gone. Bobby Gillepsie of Primal Scream puts it well in this news clip: http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/0/25417419. Has the whole world become middle-aged and less concerned as well as me? Possibly social media has replaced music as the main way to get noticed and get laid. I agree with Bobby Gillespie to some extent, there is little dangerous about the British music scene at least. On a local level new bands flourish, but they seem less concerned about being famous and rich, more concerned with enjoying what they’re doing. Is this wrong from a cultural point of view? Is it enough to enjoy your job when it’s one that has the possibility to influence other people’s ideas and lives or is that a waste of your talent? Dangerous and helpful ideas can only thrive if they are communicated successfully and perhaps there’s too much of the media taken up with concern over Miley Cyrus’s ass cheeks or whoever is causing a fuss or nothing at the moment. Don’t ask me though, I’m middle-aged and out of touch.

Link

Goodreads: Goodnight Horses

My full, first novel, Goodnight Horses, is now available to read for free on Goodreads. If you’re not already a member sign up. Please feel free to share the link and if you happen to be someone who works for a publishing company feel free to get me published.

Updated. About Me: A hairy little ginger man in a hot place.

I’m Mason Henry Summers. I write. I was first published some years ago in Wallflower Press’s Contemporary British and Irish Film Directors: A Wallflower Critical Guide. More recently I had my short story “Home” published in Outside The Asylum, the 2012 Grist anthology of short fiction. I’ve also had a couple of pieces in the free online magazine Leeds Debacle, here and here. I’ve completed a so far unpublished novel named Goodnight Horses and am working on a second, Thanks Peter God. I write short stories and occasionally blog.

I used to co-organise and host Fictions Of Every Kind, the Leeds based writer’s night. They still host an open mic section for local writers who want to share their work and also have invited speakers from around the local area, plus music. if you’re local, please do support them.

I was born in Darwen, Lancashire, spent a couple of decades there, then two more in Leeds, West Yorkshire where I married, divorced, went to art college, helped run a cinema, exhibited art. In August 2013 I came to San Antonio, Texas as the first port of call in a planned trip around parts of the world. In October 2013 I married an American woman and applied to stay. I used to live with a cat; now I’m a husband and step father in a foreign land. A hairy little ginger man in a hot place. I’m sure this will turn up in my writing.

You can find me in all the usual places online, just google my full name: Mason Henry Summers, or my alias, monkeytwohands. If you like my work please share it. if you want to publish my work, contact me. If you don’t like my work, meet me round back.

Update:
I made my own Texan. He’s gestating in a womb right now but due out late August 2015. I have a website, weird magnet , which links here to my writing blog and also to my fledging business, handmade and restored furniture and art. Please take a look.