God’s Last Burlesque

God’s Last Burlesque was inspired by my ex-father-in-law; ‘Ted’ or, to me, ‘Sir’; a man who I know for sure did actually shift some of the national boundaries on the maps of the Middle East in order to suit the needs of oil extraction. He, it was that, with his actual memories of Mosaddeq and “Sea Gem” et al, laid the foundations for the mindset that taught me to “trust none of the buggers”! I often recall how he would, when pressed (or was, more accurately, betrayed) in later life, stand in the garden (usually holding a scotch), look heavenwards whilst asking, somewhat plaintively; “why don’t you come down and fight me fair, you bastard”?

I sense that I was a somewhat weird child who got better at being odd to become a truly weird grown-up. Thus, I have spent a lifetime trying to create an illusion of ‘me’ that might be a good cover for my dealings with others; a desire for an image influenced by people, books, drama, art and dance, travel and some odd concepts of ‘sex’ as a part of a relationship.

Inside, it has always been hard for me to take myself seriously. That this reluctance was based upon good reason, I know; that is why I wrote an irreverent self-parody about the pretences that have shaped my life which, in all truth, some folks, easily fooled, have thought ‘glamorous’ and something of an ‘ego trip’. That is why, and how, in ‘Burlesque’ I set out to chart, and find a context for, how some greater power – ‘the Big Bastard Above’ or perhaps the elements of the Gaia theory – might be thought to be (mis)using the foibles of ageing; especially after stuff affecting heart, cancer and around the bits we, nice people, do not talk about.

I wanted to chart – not just for me but for others also – how illness and vulnerability, and the treatments and medication thereof, can strip away the illusions which we (some of us at least) have put in place over the years to appear to be the person we wanted others to see.

Then, finally, I wanted to ask: Does the truth set us free? …

 

Chapter Extract:

 

(….Why don’t you come down and fight me fair, you bastard?!)

If you are going to strip, and in so doing reveal your all to any observer, it then follows that, to take off your clothes, you are required, first, to attire yourself.

It then, surely requires, that one’s choice of clothing – manner of dressing (in every sense) – should reflect the role that you intend to play in the next performance.

In turn, the act of ‘disrobing’ reflects also what it is that you are disclosing to others about yourself. Indeed, it might, in a way, also force the teller of the tale to reveal – albeit in the privacy of the mind –  those affectations and truths that most of us have, likely, spent bloody years putting in place and thereafter hiding behind.

My such years were spent years living, in part at least, in the role of Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman and projecting a multitude of characters and characteristics, each designed to hide – what I perhaps feared – was the real me.  I was playing my roles and ‘pushing’ the one that I hoped others might be persuaded to buy into. In retrospect, each new illusion becomes more preposterous than the last.

The shy and introverted little lad from t’North emerged like a moth from a chrysalis laid on a nettle. He enters a world of illusions about people, travel, jets and situations that he could barely have dreamed of as having existed let alone be a part of. His journey began, perhaps, as he tied his Mac around his neck after the Saturday film matinee and then ran down Mansfield High Street with arms outstretched, masked and caped like Bat Man.

Looking back, my influences were books and, much later, travel; beauteous things of themselves. But the illusion I was creating,  appeared later, to be as if some tasteless idiot had, somehow and knowingly, salvaged the glorious bits from the ruins of a beautiful old cathedral and created a faux villa out of the wreckage he had appropriated. A place whence he could hide his real self and whence, of course, others could observe and admire his creation.

Later as I aged – a bit – I thought quietly (and only to myself of course) of Hemingway on Fitzgerald: “His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust of a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred”.

Whatever happened along that route,  and whilst I created more illusions than Paul Daniels, I am, it seems, now stepping through the swing doors of my last chance saloon and am finally having to disembark from the USS Enterprise and allow Jim Kirk to boldly go on, but this time to do so alone.

You can be bloody sure that I did not begin the process willingly, but now that it is seemingly unstoppable, I find myself getting fascinated by it; probably unhealthily so. I think in “Gypsy” the main character, having been shy and introverted all her life (it was alleged), was, initially at least, very taken with the idea that having been a bit unsure of herself, others (men inevitably) found her beautiful as she finally revealed her all.

So, if I spent much of my almost 80 years creating illusions and building castles in the sand, when did the tide start to come in?

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there“; but where is the past? When did it start and – in God’s name – whence did it go in the first place?  A famous northern actress is alleged to have said; “when I was 47, I went into the kitchen to make a cuppa tea and when I came out, I was 67!”

Of late I have myself encountered some similarly thought-provoking moments that have forced me to ask; “how did that happen and how did I get here”: I am 47 – and have been that age for some 35 years; I was born in 1942 and, for clarity and the elimination of doubt, this is begun in 2021; hence my dichotomy.

Recently I was in A&E:  naturellement I was in the best seats having got there with the usual escort and flashing blue lights. I was lying prone under an oxygen mask with more wires and stuff coming out of me than can be found in one of those roadside boxes that BT engineers are always looking into and shaking their heads; apparently with astonishment and disbelief.

After midnight this old, old guy came in, similarly attired with a mask and stuff sticking out of his arm (and other places) and, in similar circumstances, he was placed in the bed next to me. As the night passed and we moved from the drama of the main event to the adverts for the next show we were, temporarily, relieved of our masks et al;  I  slipped into my usual role of natural leader and master of the universe (no capitals) and made a few light-hearted remarks designed to relieve the tension and put the old bloke at ease. His response was: “It’s all right for you mate, you bloody wait until you are my age and then see how fuckin funny it is”.

Of course, I apologised and, to help make amends and repair the relationship, I asked him how old he was; “I am almost 65” said he!  In response, I said now’t; nothing at all save to murmur that I was sure he was in good hands and would be OK.

Thus, did I come, albeit slowly, to understand that, for as long as I can remember, my mission in life in terms of projecting ‘me’ has had little to do with actuality or the ‘truth’  per se. Nope, I have rather been concerned with creating a vision that suited the needs of the particular moment and thus, because situations change, what I became was but as the shifting of sands or tide ……