consider josie and jamie two girls so harmless they could serve on your neighbourhood watch squad. but when parrysh zephrys asked them to move so that he could park his car more easily (they were queuing in front of the ice cream parlour ably named ‘gross palace’ a favourite teenage hangout) with the words: ladies, would you mind moving up the pavement just a bit? they all but bared their teeth at him: we dont have to do anything you tell us to, said josie. you are not our father, said jamie. parrysh didnt know what to think or reply. it seemed such a simple matter to ask for and he didnt feel old enough to be their father. so he drove around the block and parked half a mile away.

when parrysh reached the ice parlour, josie and jamie were just finishing their cones. they recognised him and waved. hello old man, josie said. pervert, jamie said, just a little too loud not to be overheard. a dozy young man next to her perked up and asked: whazzup, ladies, can i be of assistance? and jamie turned to him: that bloke is a total bore! josie giggled. the young man looked sternly at parrysh who had planned to join the queue, but the two girls were in his way. would you just let me through please, he pleaded. but they wouldnt, this much was clear.

[...a few words about parrysh zephrys, PhD. he was a therapist who
specialised in couples therapy. many divorcees in this town adored
him for his delicate way of getting through to their husbands,
many husbands appreciated his way with women which had helped them
keep their dignity, and even more couples were applying themselves
diligently to their relationships using zephrys method "work it
out or walk away" - also the name of his national bestseller.]

[...josie and jamie though less innocent than their looks, also were
no harpies and no sluts. growing up in a mid-sized town had
however hardened them beyond their years. they were suckers for
attention and stimulation in the form of pills, parties or pancake
breakfasts, and as young women must, they were not going to take
any shit from anyone, the very least from men operating outside
of their mating range.]

[...and the young male bystander - he went through a very sleepy
phase of his life and really did not know what to do with himself
yet. he didnt even think his given name was right for him because
it seemed too unexciting and unpromising to him so that i won't
share it with you either because he might already have changed it
as you read this. neither josie nor jamie were his type-he was in
fact gay but had not disclosed this truth even to himself yet.]

i just want to get an ice cream, parrysh said, i have got nothing to do with either of you, so leave me alone. this was untypical for him. though he was a great assertiveness coach, he had always had problems standing up for himself.

at this point, the young man was willing to turn his back on the situation, and also josie and jamie were losing interest in parrysh who could not easily be wound up. but just as they were beginning to move aside, shrugging, gerry honeychurch who sold the ice in ‘gross palace’ that night, shouted across the crowd: we’re out of chocolate, sorry! this was the flavour for which the ice cream parlour was famous, and it was the only reason why parrysh zephrys had taken his car that he hardly ever used (which is why he lacked training in parking) and driven downtown. something inside him that had possibly been pent up and festered for a long time broke free in this moment: he shook jamie who stood closest to him and cried:

YOU SEE NOW I WONT GET MY CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM ALL BECAUSE OF YOU YOU HORRIBLE GIRL IF YOU HAD JUST LET ME PARK HERE THIS WOULDNT HAVE HAPPENED AND NOW MY EVENING IS RUINED AND ITS ALL YOUR FAULT YOU SILLY SKANKS!

he pushed jamie so that she fell against a car. the girl let loose a high-pitched, indignant scream. her friend used a much-practiced move to quickly pull out her pepper spray and a full load straight into parrysh’s eyes who cried BITCH! and fell to his knees in agony. the young man felt a strong urge to just disappear from view, but instead he threw himself with his entire weight on to the parrysh, got hold of his head and pounded it again and again on the concrete pavement, all the while feeling simultaneously like a lion and like an idiot.

when parrysh zephrys returned home that evening still without ice cream in his belly but enriched by experience and a whole lot more street-wise than before, after two hours in the police station which resulted in the officer john wesson-smith hearing the life stories of four individuals recently linked by a pathetic row in front of ‘gross palace’ (the ice cream parlour whose name i do not seem to tire of mentioning), he was happy and didnt know why. only later it occurred to him that he had touched and had been touched not just emotionally and that he was glad to have left the all-too-comfortable position of the one who only looks at malaise and misery as if on the outside, always on the outside.

© 2009 finnegan flawnt

I suffered from narcolepsy well into my thirties.

It made it difficult for me to hold down even menial jobs. Once I did a stint in a burger shop, a corner business, greasy hair and rats in the kitchen, half of the customers drunk at seven in the morning. When the shop opened, I was always the first to arrive and the last to leave. The Greek owner had a strict regimen, perhaps he thought he was Alexander the Great or something. He also had two women, both of whom thought they alone were married to him. He saw one during the day the other one in the evenings and often slept in the shop alone. Anyways, around this guy I seemed to have kicked my spell. But one day, as I was stirring a bunch of fat-dripping fries in a pan, I simply slumped. The fries landed on the floor, and I was fired. From a burger place! So I figured I needed to find a job where I could take naps any time without attracting too much attention. I thought: security guard.

I signed up as security man at a jewelry shop which consequently was robbed blind while I was – asleep. This evidently wasn’t the career for me – I’d never have thought security people needed to stay alert like this! I mean you see them virtually sleepwalking around glassy buildings or sidewalks, like zombies. A whole string of other jobs followed. One of them, manager for an accounting business wasn’t bad – my supervisor entrusted me with leading a team and she let me be. The team didn’t care either – they were happy not to be managed. I had a comfy chair where I could slouch and it was barely noticed when my darkness hit me. Until the boss walked in and found me unawakable once. That was that then – the team seemed genuinely sorry to lose me.

I then went to a therapist – lovely woman – to sort myself out. It emerged that the sleepiness was like an addiction for me. True enough – I loved the dreams I had when it happened. They were wild, I mean, unreal like dreams, but more so. I could actually touch things, make people up, and it all felt totally right and real, too. I had a lot of sex in my late twenties this way, including with Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren (who was the best, I loved her). I got to know them well – I swear, I could have written a sex biography about every single one of these women. And not only women – I made love to Cary Grant once and he let me touch the cleft in his chin like Audrey Hepburn (not my type) does it in Charade. Kinky stuff.

In those days I was into Film Noir and I wore black. My therapist wore black, too, though she wore hardly anything one summer, which was my last summer with her. I saw her bush (or thought I could) between her legs. That made me want her badly, which I couldn’t bring myself to say to her, so I left. She thought I was out of pocket, which is ridiculous because – I haven’t mentioned this yet – I have never worked for money. I am the London-born second son of garbage entrepreneur and a Swiss Heiress of Phortune – pharma fortune (that’s a pun, of course). I never hung out with any of my stuck-up relatives back in the land of green pastures, though, those wasted hooligans of fish-and-chips notoriety. I grew up in Sweden on a lovely isle I cannot even remember the name of, but the islands there look all the same and the people are all blond. Even the elk are blond.

So I had money, and I had my sweet hallucinations, and no job, but a lot of good, solid experience.

On my 39th birthday I declared the year of goodbye to my disorder.

I was fed up with being so awfully neurotic, and I couldn’t keep a girlfriend either. Perhaps they thought I was epileptic or something and wouldn’t say it. And they were all broody and wanted things to evolve into life with kids and garden and all that. Since I had already done the therapy thing, I was looking for something more, well, exotic, stimulating to get help. If I was going to have to give up the wild and wonderful fantasies I had when I fell over that seemed only fair.

I found a witch in a small Italian village in the province of Catanzaro. Drove through one day, saw her sign along the road,

which impressed me, so I went in. She was my age I guess, covered in a fishnet suit or something like it and had hair down to her ass. Lots of makeup, very dark eyes, wide apart, and a long nose, equine proportions, I would say. She seemed just crazy enough for me. We talked and there was some incense.

I paid cash up front, I’ve never minded that because I always have a carpetbag full of notes with me. She saw them too, and I thought then perhaps that’s a mistake. Do you trust me, she said, and I nodded, thinking fuck you I don’t trust you to the end of your schnozzle, but I was curious by then: she had lots of ancient looking icons on the wall, candlelight, several small temples, and her room was like a dark, cozy cave. I felt titillated and odd and not at all afraid.

She then put me in a trance and asked me to go to sleep, which until then I could never do by sheer will, but there I could. She commanded me to summon one of my fantasy girls, and I tried and who came was Sophia Loren, in a very tight dress and shorts with her lovely fat thighs and heaving bosom, it was a feast, but I didn’t want to go any further because I was not alone, and it would’ve felt like wanking in front of the witch (not my thing). So I simply sat down, in my dream, and Sophia sat with me, and she wore fishnet, too, and her eyes were very dark, and she stroked my cheek. It felt wonderful. She held me. I love to be held. I asked, can I put my head in your lap and she allowed me to do it. Sophia, I said, this is so good, and that was true. I didn’t need anything anymore, and I didn’t want to wake up at all. I felt so safe. I love you, Freddy, she said, and stroked me again. And so I stopped being narcoleptic, from that day on I lived with La Loren and I don’t need much, just some stroking and water once in a while, I just want her to look at me and hold me. I need no more.

(published in Antique Children)