Disappointman episode #2

Is it a bird, flying clumsily into a tree?
Is it a plane, severely delayed?
No, it is only Disappointman,
And he’s incredibly late.

Sarcastic Lover Prince: Sympathy For Wilting Herbs

Time for me is unmoving, a dead sea in which there are no waves. This stillness of time is a result of my own stillness within space, I have known nothing but the interior of my castle for about three days. Feeling no desire to travel through social space, I was compelled to stay within the confines of my abode, and the unmoving sea, with its cold stillness, has presented me with the gift of self reflection.

When one is in this state of self reflection it is advised not to be within social space, for it is a truly exhausting experience when he must watch every word escape from his mouth and flutter like autumn leaves into a box of regret. As this box fills up he is always conscious of his manner, where he rests his gaze, his posture, and the way his garments rests upon his shoulders. This is not reflecting as part of a real existence, when one looks in retrospect, after the event. Rather, it is in the moment, reflecting as one goes along, swimming in a tumultuous sea of worry, simultaneous to the event.

Thus, I have remained in the castle from the moment I noticed the symptoms, for one simply cannot survive socially when struck down with such an ailment. I know not what to do, for this illness of mine seems unrelenting, and I cannot stay here forever. At moments such as this, I tend to think about the Ice King. I wonder how he would deal with such situations. I picture him sitting in that cardboard box with a calm exterior and stolid expression, internally tending to his bitterness while showing absolutely no sign of the chaos I imagine to be within him. Perhaps he owes it all to that cardboard box, it may regulate his bitterness, which means it may regulate my self reflection. Perhaps my desperation has caused me to latch onto any absurd thing to find a solution, but it is certainly worth a try.

I manage to find a cardboard box, it seems a bit small but I don’t have any others so I’m going to have to settle. I place one foot in it, and then the other, and slowly crouch down into the box. I’m barely in it when it starts to rip and I find myself on an unintentionally fashioned raft that separates the floor and I. Sitting on my makeshift raft, floating in unregulated self reflecting waters, I decide to leave the castle to go the Ice Palace. I need to communicate with someone, and I come upon the realisation that, in my current state, the Ice King is the only person I can speak to.


A teapot of green tea brews as I stare into the blank eyes of the Ice King. I have been telling him about this illness of mine, my inability to leave the castle, and my short-lived adventure in the cardboard box. I was sure I noticed the faint trace of a wry smile when I recounted the last story. He sits there now, pondering something, turning it over in his head like one turns a pear drop over in their mouth. “Do you think it’s something you ate?” he asks, pouring green tea into both our cups, “something I ate?”
“I remember you telling me that you once felt this way after eating pesto.”
At this moment the Ice King resembles a strange combination of my doctor and some sort of detective, a premise for an abysmal Eighties television programme. “Yes I did feel the same self reflection when I had eaten the pesto, but it only lasted for a short period of time, this has lasted for about three days..” I say as steam rises from my cup. The Ice King takes a sip from his before saying, “I’m not so sure if the self reflective nature of pesto can indeed be measured so concretely in time..”

He has a point. I breathe in the pleasant aroma of the tea, I begin to feel better as the floral fragrance of jasmine envelopes me, filling me with undertones of optimism. Being in social space doesn’t seem as traumatic as it did an hour ago. However, I am not completely cured. As I get up to leave the Palace, the Ice King says, “I’d go for the red pesto next time if I were you,” that faint trace of a smile appears again. I smile and leave the Palace, slightly bewildered at the possibility that the Ice King might have actually made a joke.


Once I get back to the castle I go straight into the kitchen for I stopped off at the supermarket on the way and need to take out the items I bought. I carefully take each item out of the bag and place them on the work surface. Olive oil, garlic, pine nuts, parmesan cheese and basil. I start to feel slightly nervous, for although I find all these things pleasant, I am uncertain of what effect they will have on me, as they the ingredients for pesto. If it is indeed pesto that has struck me down with this self reflective illness then perhaps the only way of being cured is to understand it, deconstruct the nature of it and immerse myself in its process.

After chopping the basil leaves, I put them in a food processor along with the olive oil, three cloves of garlic, a few tablespoons of pine nuts, some parmesan and salt and pepper before blending the ingredients together. The aroma exudes from the blender and wraps itself around me, making me feel slightly nauseous. I empty the contents into a jar and close it, staring at the very thing that has kept me in the castle these last few days. Ironically, I can’t seem to make out my reflection in the jar.

I am uncertain if I have been completely cured, but I understand pesto a little better. I think I can see past its neutrality now, for I know of the individual components that it is comprised of and how it comes to be.

I stare at the pile of invitations that have not been replied to (describing it as a pile endows me with a false sense of popularity. The ‘pile’ consists of no more than two invitations) I decide to go a concert that Disappointman has invited me to. Perhaps the only way to know if I am cured is to immerse myself in social space again.

Disappointman arrives at the venue, he’s half an hour late, but I expected him to be later. His powers must be wavering. I hand him the jar of pesto I made because I know he likes it, he drops it on the floor by accident. Luckily the jar hasn’t cracked and I am safe from the self reflection inducing aroma.
“Ah homemade! Fantastic. Did you grow the basil too? You have a basil plant right?”
“No it’s shop-bought basil, the plant died a few months ago,” Disappointman nods sympathetically, this nodding blends into a dance. I decide to join him.

I’m in a stream of dancing couples, embracing as they float gracefully. It is proving difficult to move with such grace, I’m finding it hard to move my limbs, their rigidity cuts through the gentle flow. I am aware of every movement I make, and each of these movements is attached to regret. As I move awkwardly I start to feel guilty about the basil plant that had wilted and died as a result of my failure to water it. It had been completely removed from my memory. Maybe that’s when it all started, perhaps the guilt within me had manifested as self reflection when I ate pesto. Perhaps I’m making excuses for my awful dancing.
I sit down, staring at the dancing stream, hoping that I too might float gracefully through it one day.

*

It’s a Sunday morning, thus begins that day of reflection. Part of my maintaining a real existence involves looking back at the week’s events to anchor myself in uncertain seas. To be honest, I think I’ve been reflecting a bit too much of late, and have grown tiresome of the whole business. I walk into the kitchen and boil some water. I pour myself a cup of jasmine tea and breathe in the sweet fragrance of optimism. Sunlight pours in, washing over me as sprouting basil leaves emerge to meet it.

Disappointman episode #1

Flying at the speed of shame
to be forever late,
but send a barrage of apologies
to drown you in a thousand sorrys,
A broken vase
with good intentions
of which shards cry,
s-o-r-r-y.
Watch him thwart the plans
of hand-eye coordination
and good timekeeping,
for he will never fail
he will never cease
to be so endlessly,
endlessly
Disappointing.

Sarcastic Lover Prince: Italian Dining and Self Loathing

I’m on a boat in the middle of a vast sea that is ever so still. There’s nothing to anchor me down, but I’m not moving. The still waters work well in my favour for I’m taking stock of things, I’m fishing. However, it is not Trout or Mackerel that I am hoping to catch but something much more rare. I had heard that this was a good spot to catch pieces of real existence.

I was an abstract thought that needed validation, and this came in the form of a real existence, pieces of which I have recently started collecting in the hope that one day, I’d become anchored and thus connected with the world. I was in luck. I pulled and hoisted my catch onto the boat: ‘an arrangement to have lunch with a friend.’ I’d be sure to place this in the highest esteem amongst all the others in my rather small collection.

The following day brought about this particular engagement, in an Italian café situated inside a shopping centre. Oh imagine the elation one felt when happening upon such a peculiar social space as this, for there was the social space occupied by my friend and I, within that of the café, within the shopping centre - it was a meta-space. There was a display of shoes just outside the entrance of a café, a coral reef of Stilletos and pumps that was free to be perused by passing shoppers. As I watched the shoppers through the large windows I couldn’t help but feel like I was in an aquarium.

Drawing this similarity was undoubtedly distracting me from the arduous task at hand: deciding what to order. I simply could not decide, so I appealed to my friend to decide for me. Only too familiar with my abysmal decision making skills, she readily recommended a pasta dish which seemed pleasant enough for someone with an uncertain disposition such as I.

I happily settled on this recommendation which made ordering a less arduous task than it usually was. My mind now at rest, I was free to enjoy the event and converse with my friend on a number of topics. However, the content mood I was in soon disintegrated on arrival of the food.

The pasta seemed to have been drizzled generously with green pesto. My friend, noticing my hesitation, enquired, ‘what’s the matter?’ I told her that the dish had pesto in it, to which she, adorned with a puzzled expression, began to recall previous meals at which I had eaten pesto without any complaint. ’That was before it happened..’ I said.
‘Before what happened?’ she asked with a weary look on her face.
‘Before pesto made me dislike myself.’

As soon as these words escaped my mouth I could see the already puzzled expression upon my friend’s face begin to change into one of complete bewilderment. I inferred that a verbal ’hit and run’ was out of the question, I would have to explain my last statement.

‘As I was dining one evening, I received a letter that caused me a great amount of vexation. I shan’t go into the particulars of the letter itself, the point is that it drove me to a mood that was quite rotten indeed. I sat there staring angrily into a bowl of pasta with tuna and pesto. It was a simple dish, a neutral object, and it was this neutrality which made it easy for me to transfer my annoyance about the letter to the dish itself.'

'I continued to eat, and as I was doing this, I realised that I had opened the gate, and now everything that I disliked and loathed was pouring into the bowl.'
‘It must have overflowed with all that hatred,’ she said with a complacent smile. Returning the smile, I continued, ‘well you’d think so, all my hatred and loathing combined with the pesto, becoming part of it. The pesto now embodied everything that I disliked.

‘That’s all well and good, but that doesn’t explain how the pesto made you dislike yourself,’ she said. Perhaps I was getting carried away with my account, forgetting about the ridiculous statement I was meant to be explaining. ‘Well, I continued to eat my dinner, consuming my hatred. All the things I disliked were now inside me, this brought on a certain kind of nausea, a nausea laced with self-refection.

This self-reflective nausea led me to question how reasonable I actually was in disliking and hating the things I did. Did Pantomimes really deserve my hatred? Was I unreasonable for loathing the term, ‘a bottle of bubbly?’ With a queasy stomach I continued to descend the staircase of self-awareness, thinking myself to be more and more disagreeable with each step. The idea of finding out what lay at the bottom of this staircase (if I were to ever reach it) was not so appealing to me, so I stopped eating. The nausea subsided within ten minutes, I don’t think there was any long-term damage.’

My friend smiled, she seemed satisfied with my ridiculous explanation for a ridiculous statement, but I dare not flatter myself. ‘So how are you going to cope with this?’ she asked, pointing at my plate.
‘I guess it’s too late to send it back…’I said with an air of resignation. It would truly be a hassle to send the food back and order something else, for these acts were bound in more explanations and indecisions. Social exertions such as these were really too much to bare at times.

I came to realise that even a small piece of real existence such as this was fraught with difficulties, difficulties that arose from interacting and even banal acts such as eating. It seemed that acquiring the pieces was only half the battle. I sat there staring into the sea, watching uninterested shoppers float past the coral reef of footwear, chewing a forkful of pasta while unwanted high heels glistened.

Sarcastic Lover Prince: The Torch of New Interaction

Red, red, red, red, red, red, red. I had recently been reduced to purchasing a book about the art of flirting. In one chapter in particular, the subject of how to act in a nightclub was explored. In this section the author referred to females that were potentially interested in you as ‘green lights’ and those that weren’t as ’red lights.’ this particular aspect of the book came to mind when I found myself at a nightclub, swimming through what seemed like an endless sea of Vermillion.

It occurred to me that if I actually attempted to interact with the girls there, I might start to experience a greener hue. That seemed to be the theory anyway, but my ability to convert theory into action leaves a lot to be desired.

Being in this social space surely meant that I was somewhat free to interact with the people within it, however, this did not seem to be the case. For within this social space were other, smaller social spaces which consisted of groups of people. Their doors weren’t open to me, I’d have to pull something rather spectacular out of the bag if I wanted to be part of these spaces.

I bought a drink at the bar, my exchange with the barman had brought me into another social space - one that was rather sparse, except for a few dead words that lay there, disintegrating into nothingness. As they crumbled away I felt no remorse, I mean, how could I? I felt nothing for them, I’d uttered these words and as soon as they had left my mouth I cast them down and left them there to wither and decompose.

“can I get a vodka and lemonade please,” “that’ll be £1.50,” “thanks,” “thanks.” these words had pretty much gone now, and what remained of the broken down detritus became part of the space itself, forming the roles of both the barman and myself. The barman has interests and hobbies, as do I, but I will never know about his and he will never know of mine while we remain in this particular social space. We could be best friends, but in this space our interaction consists only of my ordering a drink and him selling it to me.

In order to change this space and cultivate words that would not die as soon as I said them I’d have to transcend my role within it. I wasn’t quite ready for this so I got my drink and walked away from the bar, leaving the social space and re-entering the larger one of the club itself. This shifting between social spaces left me feeling slightly nauseous.

Red, red, red, red. Oh how I hoped for viridian to wash over me, but perhaps I was hoping for too much. I felt that there was no way of me being part of any social space here unless I had some sort of key.

I went to relieve my bladder and as I was doing so I noticed a puddle of urine on the floor at the back of the toilet. It was coming towards me fairly rapidly along with a worrying feeling. This feeling was not brought on by the prospect of getting piss on my shoe, don’t get me wrong, no one wants to get piss on their shoe, but it was not my main concern.

My main concern lay with what this yellow river symbolised. I started to believe that it represented some sort of timeline, and once it had reached my shoe then that would be it, I would have lost any opportunity I had to interact with anyone and prevail socially. This may have been an irrational belief but I quickly finished up and moved my foot away nonetheless, hopefully securing any opportunities that I might encounter.

Before I walked out of the cubicle I noticed something on the ledge behind the toilet. It was a lighter. However, it was no ordinary lighter for I believed it to be the key that I required to unlock the various social spaces that existed within the club.

Someone might need a lighter and they might happen to ask me if I had one, and I would. I’d give it to them and we would ride the waves of conversation, the words would carry me around the new and exciting social space. It was my destiny to take the lighter, so I pocketed it and exited the toilet. I felt exhilarated by the prospect of new interaction, even if it were just for a minute or two - that would be something.

The excitement of possibility took me to a hypothetical and fantastical space where words flowed seamlessly from my mouth, covering me like a blanket. It left me ungrounded enough in reality to fail to notice that the fast approaching piss was now creeping around the toilet door.

Not only was I bathing in vermillion but I was soon to bathe in amber as well. The colour which would be produced by the combination of the two did not seem all that attractive to me, so I made a hasty exit from the club.

I found myself in the social space of the various smokers outside, someone was bound to ask me for a light here. As I hung around I found myself entering a liminal space, between worlds, having just left one social space and waiting to enter another.

I remained in this state for a while, no one was approaching me for a light. I decided to give up and go back to the castle, and as I started to walk back I began to wonder whether I had misconstrued the nature of my relationship with the lighter. Perhaps the lighter was not a bridge between me and someone else, but it was in fact I that was the bridge between two other individuals. Maybe if I left the lighter on a low wall on the way home, then someone would find it and they would then have the key to new interaction.

Once again I had begun to feel like an abstract thought, a spectre, only able to observe new interactions between others without ever being part of it myself. I imagine that if I did happen to leave the lighter somewhere, then I might be causing some sort of interaction and thus leaving some kind of imprint. However, I decided against it and kept the lighter, for I was quite determined to make good use of it one day, even if it transpired that its only purpose was to light my cranberry and cinnamon scented candle.

A week after this event I found myself in my chamber staring at the very same scented candle, enjoying its sickly, yet comforting fragrance. The lighter lay next to it, having fulfilled its only purpose to me. I picked it up and placed it on the mantelpiece, admiring it both as an artefact of lost opportunities, and a symbol of one’s desperate attempt to grasp onto the idea of fate.

Sarcastic Lover Prince: Part Three of the First Invention

On a lazy, static Sunday afternoon I began to reflect on the week’s events in an attempt to grasp onto a real existence, for part of what constitutes a real existence is the act of looking back on events past in order to anchor one’s self in time, and thus avoiding life as a floating piece of debris in the uncertain sea of the now. On embarking on this existence affirming reflection I came to a worrying realisation, in order to give an impression that I arrived neatly at such a conclusion the weeks social events will have to be recounted.

On Monday I went out with Steve and Alexa. On Wednesday I watched a film with Sarah and Dan. On Thursday I went out to dinner with Tom and Claire. On Saturday I was walking the earth alone and I bumped into Julius and Rebecca and before I knew it, I was walking with them. It seemed that I had enjoyed a pleasant, social week, interacting with others and thus securing another component for a real existence. The catch however, was how each pair I interacted with interacted with each other. They were all couples, romantically involved.

On reflecting on how I had basically spent the whole week interacting with couples I came to the conclusion that I was a third wheel, and a serial one at that. No matter how accommodating each couple was, I couldn’t help but feel like I was a stain on the carpet of their social/romantic space. I seemed to be an abstract thought floating between these different social spaces that would only ever be temporal. I decided to visit the Ice King in an attempt to shed some light on my realisation.
He climbed out of a cardboard box an looked at me with a stolid expression that I had grown accustomed to whenever I was in his company. He prepared a pot of Earl Grey tea which we both enjoyed while I told him about the conclusion I had come to.

I finished my verbal spew and watched the Ice King’s unchanging expression. In the silence in which he was hopefully formulating some advice for my social conundrum, I began to question why I had come here to seek advice from the Ice King. He often spent time in that cardboard box of his, cultivating a bitterness that seemed to be growing quite nicely. It could be said that I was the opposite, I spent a lot of time travelling between different social spaces trying to find a certain something - what this certain something was still seemed to be a mystery to me.
I guess the Ice King was all about theory, and I was about action. Perhaps I was hoping that between the two of us we could construct a balance of some sort.

“I heard about this guy,” he started, “who visited cafes and other social spaces. While in these spaces he would listen to couples’ conversations and write down excerpts from them. Once he was at home he’d compile these excerpts from different conversations and construct a relationship of his own, complete with arguments and quarrels.”
It was love constructed completely out of language, and perhaps the most I could ever hope for.
I left the Ice King’s palace without the advice that I had perhaps hoped for, although I now had something else - a possible solution, a vehicle to make the most of my social being as a third wheel. Maybe if I combined Alexa’s annoyance with Steve for getting a bit too drunk, with the loving manner in which Julius and Rebecca held each other’s hand then I would be on my way to creating what I had been seeking.
This constructed relationship, made up of words and theoretical gestures could be supply me with another component of a real existence; I let the warmth of delusion wash over me as I thought this.

The next day I found myself in a coffee shop with a notebook full of the records of interactions between couples. The stale words, with memories of romantic gestures between others, just didn’t seem to be enough. No matter how I tried to keep this constructed relationship alive, it was dead to me. I commended the guy the Ice King told me about, for his ability to find happiness in these dead words.

The more I thought about it, the more I started to believe that “this guy” was in fact the Ice King himself. This belief was further fuelled by the sighting of a cardboard box at a far table in the coffee shop I was in. whether he was the Ice King or not didn’t really matter, this method wasn’t for me. I put the notebook away, I’d probably dig it up one day when it transpired that things would not get better.

I declined Claire’s invite to go for a drink with her and Tom. I thought I would take a break from third wheeling for a while. As the possibility of being a first or second wheel was highly unlikely, it would do me no good to dwell on it. I decided to meet Disappointman for lunch. Disappointman had the ability to be incredibly, and endlessly disappointing. He was an hour and fifteen minutes late to meet me. His powers were not failing.

We talked for a while and ended up on the subject of the third wheel. He voiced some of his insecurities about the whole thing, which included the tricky nature of seating arrangements when dining with a couple. “Let’s say you have two chairs on either side of the table, do you sit next to the girl of the couple? That seems wrong. However, you can’t sit next to her either, for that is the classic romantic seating arrangement. Your best bet is to sit next to the guy and have an empty chair opposite, or sit opposite the guy and have the empty chair next to you.”
Can you be disappointed by someone when you weren’t actually expecting anything from them? Having lunch with Disappointman actually lightened my mood, and I had acquired some tips to help me in my life as a third wheel.