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| Compulsion | |
| By Leo | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 22 August 2006 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Just another piece of cyber fluff.. The community centre sat behind the library, just next to the now defunct public toilets. Which was strange, because it still smelt as though they handled a fairly unhealthy throughput. It was Tuesday night and the room was nearly full of support group members. Fellow survivors. The facilitator, who looked like a bit like an undernourished Kermit the frog, encouraged everyone to take a cup of milky tea and a biscuit from the table before ushering everyone to their seats. Once he was satisfied that everyone had settled, he sat down, crossed his sandals earnestly and opened the proceedings with the sombreness of a newly bereaved undertaker. “Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Thanks once again for attending. I’d like to start by welcoming a brave new soul to our little group” he started clapping “Please give a warm welcome to Sam..” Sam smiled in the tight-lipped awkward kind of way that a chronically constipated patient does when first meets his consultant. Others smiled back at him. He looked around, but naked fear prevented him from seeing much further than the end of his nose. Stress and concentration just didn’t agree with him. Maybe that was why he avoided sex, at all costs. Even with himself. The facilitator continued, “ If you’d like to introduce yourself and share your truth…” “Eh… ok….,” he started nervously, having to catch his breath once or twice before continuing, “My name is Sam… I’m 37 years of age… and I’m … and I’m … oh god this is hard…phew… my name is Sam and I’m a compulsive writer……” A ripple of applause passed round the room. As he began to feel a little more settled, some of the others came into focus. A young guy in a frightening pink shirt with huge lapels buttoned tightly to the neck, an exotic ginger haired lady with big red lips and an enormous comely bosom, a tall frightening looking skinhead girl who twiddled her nose stud and a little Japanese girl whose feet didn’t touch the floor. Next to him sat a huge chap who looked a bit like a large dollop of melting ice cream, he had a tatty piece of pink fabric sticking plaster holding the frame of his national health glasses together. “I’ve been like this as long as I can remember….” For a moment his emotions welled up like a blocked toilet and tears caught in his eyelids. “I think it all started a long time ago when I had an ‘experience’ with my English teacher… I was only 12….” There were gasps around the room, “… he kept me behind after school.. Called it creative writing… said he wanted to really feel my prose…” Those round the room couldn’t help themselves, whispers of ‘dirty bastard’ and ‘wants hanging..’ were audible. Sam carried on, to nods of support from around the group. The comely lady’s bosom wobbled with frightening intensity in a show of solidarity. The Japanese girl held tight to her chair, lest she be swept off it in the escalating excitement by the silk-cupped fleshy tsunami. “It’s been with me ever since. This ungodly urge.. I’ve tried to hide it for so long. Even my wife didn’t know.. to begin with anyway... I was slipping downstairs after she’d gone to sleep, and was clearing 8, 10 and sometimes 12 pages a night”. Now gasps of incredulity. “Before long I was even getting up early and grabbing a page or two before she got out of bed. And then she noticed the blisters on my fingers. I lied to begin with. Said I’d had been injured masturbating. But she saw through it in no time. She was devastated, she found all the receipts for print cartridges and paper.. I’d even spent the money she put in the biscuit tin.. the money she’d been saving for her colonic irrigation…” The pink shirt released his top button and the skinhead stopped picking her nose. “We talked all night, and I promised her I would sort it out. I managed to stay away from the PC at home for a couple of days… but then I started using the one at work. I even started visiting an Internet café. Of course this led me to the web, and visiting those sites where people were even encouraged to write… my god I was in my element…I couldn’t stop. I knew I had it bad when I went out and bought a thesaurus..” Members of the group couldn’t take their eyes off Sam. They sat transfixed. Speechless. Slack jawed with a shared anxiety. Anybody who has seen Jade Goody in an unguarded moment, try to count to ten without her fingers, would know the look. “Before long I’d got a cheap laptop and was secretly bringing it home … I started doing it out in the potting shed… God it broke my Suzie’s heart when she found it out hidden under the azaleas. She gave me an ultimatum.. it was her or the writing… God I still miss her….” The big guy with the plaster on his glasses to his immediate writing started phantom typing on his lap. Others tried not to acknowledge it. They’d all been there. Experienced that strange, powerful feeling; like a new age traveller, with a Prince Albert walking past an industrial strength magnet. “I moved out. Took everything I owned in black bin bags. I slept in my car. I pretended to everyone at work that everything was ok. It got me so bad. I even bought some voice recognition software. To my eternal shame I dramatised and drove.. how despicable.. I’m disgusted with myself.. God knows how I didn’t cause an accident…” The facilitator noticed some restlessness. This was always the most dangerous part as former addicts fought dark urges, reawakened fleetingly as they listened to someone who had so recently indulged their predilections. He’d seen the same thing with George Michael when he’d walked past an Armitage Shanks factory. “It’s just that feeling…. The feeling of your fingers on the keyboards..… seeing a piece of writing take shape… your writing… your own unique creation… god it makes me feel so excited…” The large guy had started to perspire heavily, and type more intensely. The chap in the pink shirt sat on his hands. The comely maiden pulled a small dog eared note pad out of her bra, and looked at it furtively before shoving it back inside quickly. She looked round to see if she had been seen. No. She’d got away with it. Others had presumed she was checking her silicon for leaks. “First there is the flow of ideas,.. … oh it’s so exciting… then they thicken and firm up.. there’s an aching as you stroke the keys… such urgency .. backwards and forwards you work feverishly.. you keep going.. harder and faster you slave.. when its getting near completion there’s a tingle.. a sense of anticipation.. then finally ecstasy.. absolute ecstasy… before you know it you’ve got output everywhere, all over the chair and desk, just dripping through your fingers.. and you want to expose it.. to anyone… and everyone..…” People were standing and clapping. Chanting. ‘Write. Write. Write!’ the volume increased to a near fever pitch as the facilitator looked round wildly at the insurrection that was unfolding. “No no no!… please… sit down” he cried out, “.. please! No good will come of it… you can’t all get publishing deals… you won’t earn any money… its hopeless … pointless please… please no… sit down… SIT DOWN! PLEASE!” He collapsed underfoot weeping as Sam was hoisted up to shoulder height and the whole group continued to chant in unison “ WRITE! WRITE! WRITE!” Like a pack of wild dogs they converged on the table containing the tea and biscuits. In a matters of moments, they had cleared it and overturned it. Group members then grabbed it and ran out into the hall, holding it like a battering ram. They began using it to break down the door to the computer studies room. ‘One .. two.. three..’ came the cry. On the third charge, the door splintered and they poured into the room. Each claiming a console. In seconds the screens were lighting up around the room. They quickly barricaded the room when everyone was in. Moments later fingers were typing feverishly on the keyboards. Faces lit up in rapture. Oh it felt so good.. so so good. Negotiators were on the scene within the hour. The women’s institute had to cut short an art class. The naked male model was bundled out through the fire exit into a waiting Morris minor by three elderly spinsters. He was covered only in a very small tea cosy. One which all three held remarkably tightly. A class covering applied proctology ‘entry techniques’ was also cancelled at the last minute, much to the chagrin of the assembled accountants and solicitors who had been queuing outside all afternoon. The building was quickly surrounded by the writing police. The Internet connections were first to be cut. And then requests for more paper and print cartridges were denied. This was a matter of policy. The government never gave into the demands of typists. They waited it out, and after four days it was over. A combination of old RSI injuries and acute writers cramp. Each writer came out in only their underwear, under the watchful eye of snipers with gas masks, positioned up on the toilet roof. They were immediately handcuffed and given a sedative enema. The prime minister was asked during question time about the ugly rise in people wanting to express ideas and he gave his commitment to clamping down on free speech. From the shadows, members of a dissident writing cell looked on… they needed to explore their dark urges and spread their gospel.. One day the world would know they existed. One day very soon, the ‘greatwriting’ group would publish, and to hell with the consequences.. .
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