My Misery (Lux / ICA Biennial 2012) from Annabel Frearson on Vimeo.

My Misery

When I was younger I shared a house with my blind friend, Ernest Black; it was surprising how clean he kept it. Such a shame that we fell out; I thought I caught him looking at the object of my desires, Geneva Joy.

Geneva Joy, oh love of my life, she rendered me ardent with her ample anatomy, she assassinated me with her beautiful behind, her assembled loveliness pierced my heart like an arrowy arrow, her accent reminded me of Gale Porter. From the moment Geneva Joy joined my firm as an auditor, I was a beggar in her shadow, enraptured by those great orbs of delight. Her presence hung over me as a bauble of auguries, she inflamed my arteries, how I longed to roll in those boundless blankets of flesh.

While she was engrossed in her bookkeeping, I yearned to taste the bosom berries that strained against the elasticity of her dress and find myself drenched in the climes and curdles of her secret chamber. I passed hours gazing rapturously at her industrious fingers calculating the fluctuating fortunes of our enterprise, as a fiend possessed in the confines of my station. The expedient bustle of her petticoat left me floundering in a sea of carelessness. When ever she summoned me to her celestial hemisphere to chastise the inadequate idleness of my labours, I came bounding like an antelope across the blue carpeted open plan room. By way of enticement I began to apply Oh de Cologne (its name really was ‘Oh’, believe it or not) and lingered doating in the environs of her dominion, as she brooded entrancingly over the books. I assumed a French sounding voice: “Arose say lovely” I expressed under my breath in a murmur of inarticulate delirium; “man rays do shone in the image of your divine beauty.” Geneva Joy, oh, most feminine of females, most bodily of bodies, benefactor of my dreams, or chasms of desire.

As you can imagine, I was heart-broken when she moved to Citadel following conflicting opinions with the powers that be. I could not make out the full sense of the argument but while listening near the door I over heard the words, “fraud .. threat .. extort .. gigantic loss .. infamy .. imprisonment .. doomed .. imbibed .. glutted .. gilded pocket .. mutiny .. brink of incalculable disaster .. hangman .. offals on a stick .. doomed .. Ingolstadt .. indebted .. inquiries .. pittance .. run for the hills .. peasants .. imprecate .. judgment day .. schiavi ognor frementi .. high noon .. Red October .. ignoble, ignominious, ignominy .. doomed .. inexorable .. doomed .. Northern Rock .. print money .. inglorious .. insatiate .. mighty Mahometan .. profane .. invulnerable .. mutability .. Ireland .. plunged .. irreparable .. Lausanne .. opprobrium .. resignation .. mountain of lies .. London .. Margaret .. misled .. misfortune .. Black Monday .. St Moritz .. parties over .. penniless .. penury .. nation outstript .. perdition .. execrated .. unparalleled, unprotected, unrestrained precipitation of stock .. money, money, money .. overtaxed .. doomed .. doomed.” And that, as they say, was that.

Geneva Joy: quitted. Geneva Joy: gone. Geneva Joy: left. Geneva Joy: forsaken. Geneva Joy: abandoned. Geneva Joy: departed. Geneva Joy: relieved. Geneva Joy: relinquished. Geneva Joy: removed. Geneva Joy: resigned. Geneva Joy: sacrificed. Geneva Joy: sailed. Geneva Joy: saluted. Geneva Joy: deserted. Geneva Joy: debarred. Geneva Joy: showed the door. Geneva Joy: absent without leave. Geneva Joy: ceased. Geneva Joy: dispelled. Geneva Joy: dispersed. Geneva Joy: dismissed. Geneva Joy: shunned. Geneva Joy: spurned. Geneva Joy: disowned. Geneva Joy: curbed. Geneva Joy: transported. Geneva Joy: vanquished. Geneva Joy: transmuted. Geneva Joy: withdrawn. Geneva Joy: unbounded. Geneva Joy: eradicated. Geneva Joy: terminated. Geneva Joy: quitted, quitted, quitted, quitted, quitted, quitted, quitted, quitted, quitted, quitted, quitted, quitted, quitted, quitted, quitted, quitted, quitted, quitted, quitted, quitted, quitted. I fled into the cold cold rain:

"My misery, my misery, my, my, my miserable, miserable misery, my misery, misery, misery, miserable, miserable, miserable, miserable, miserable misery, my misery, my misery, my misery, my misery, miserable misery, misery, misery, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, miserable misery, misery, misery, misery, misery, miserable, miserable, miserable, miserable, miserable, my, my miserable, miserable, miserable, misery, miserable misery, miserable misery, my miserable, my miserable, my miserable, my miserable, misery, misery, my misery, my misery, my misery, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, misery, misery, misery, miserable misery, miserable, miserable, miserable, misery, miserable misery, miserable misery, my misery, my misery, my, my, my miserable, miserable misery, my misery, misery, misery, miserable, miserable misery, my misery, my misery, my misery, my misery, miserable, miserable, miserable, misery, misery, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, miserable, miserable, miserable, miserable, miserable, my, my miserable misery, miserable misery, miserable misery, my miserable, my miserable, my miserable, my miserable, miserable misery, miserable misery, miserable misery, miserable misery, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine."

The heat of the under ground and stifle of overflowing humanity benumbed the agony that had made carnage of my heart, and by the time I reached Wood Green, after a quick flit through The Evening Standard, I was more interested in the fate of two cottagers found dead on the Heath.

And so it was with a cool head that I sought revenge on Ernest Black. Rather than blast him with my repeat action shot gun, I resolved to play him like a Game Boy. Having entered the house unperceived, I became an invisible torturer:

I removed his chair as he sat down; then I turned the heat up too far while he was cooking his food; then I poured water over him during his meal; then I relieved myself into the running water behind him as he bathed; then I cut pieces out of his clothing; then I came in his cottage cheese; then I hung his gold fish (why on earth did a blind man have one?) in a lamp shade; then I painted wild startled eyes on his lids while he slept, and wrote ‘retard’ on his forehead; then I threw up on his guide dog, Snowy; then I set fire to his seat as he indulged in a true crime murder mystery romance; then I performed a number two on his door step; then I placed his details on a gay Face Book group; then I burst my boils on his face flannel; then I dressed up like a vampire with cape and fangs and stood over him, teeth bared around his neck; then I knocked on the window whenever he lay down; then I had him drink blood for breakfast, combined with his milk and oatmeal; then I created large writing on the back of his jacket that said: I HATE CHINKS, DEWS, FROGS, THE WHOLE OF AFRICA, ARABIAN NUTS, GERMANS, GREEKS, ITALIANS, EASTERN EUROPEAN VAGRANTS, BLACK WOMEN, SPANISH MEN, BALMY RUSSIAN FOOT BALL TYRANTS, THE DULL DUTCH, INDIAN BEGGARS, FILTHY TURKS, THAT BLACK AMERICAN LEADER (who the Hell does he think he is??), ASYLUM SEEKING DISEASE SPREADING ORIENTALISTS, MERCENARY ASIATICS, DANCING IRISH FAIRYLAND DRUNKEN LABOURERS, ALL HOMELESS PEOPLE, THEIR DOGS, AND EVERY ONE FROM SCOTLAND TOO..’ I would have continued but I ran out of space; then I ordered in his name the entire winter and summer collections from the Little Woods catalogue; then I consumed a large quantity of roasted vegetables and broke silent wind right next to him; then I made Snowy eat some Ecstasy and set him loose, watching with delight as he became fiendish in his affections and attempted to bestow his passions on all manner of creature and, indeed, inanimate objects: “Down, Snowy! Down, Snowy! Down, Snowy! Down, Snowy! Snowy! Down!” echoed the voice of Ernest for hours, in vain against his unremitting exertions. In the end my laughter gave me away, and Ernest cracked.

The full vicious venom of a victim exploded upon me. Ernest rushed head long towards me – or at least to where he assumed I was – an armada of fury, convulsive with contempt, demoniacal roarings gurgling in his throat. For some reason I decided to indulge him; it was strangely sublime relinquishing myself to a deranged deformity. After all, I did want to die and I was perhaps not really cut out to be a time traveller; my grasp of history was, I freely admit, rather woeful. By the time I had contemplated all of this, Ernest was upon me, arms desperately flying in the wildest revolutions, like a child taking its first swimming lesson. My shrieks encouraged him and, having struggled with me to the ground, he first wrenched my arms from their sockets and then jumped on them until he cracked the bone of one and burst the veins of the other so that blood gushed forth from it like a waterspout. Once my arms were broken I was resistless to the avalanche of violence that he reigned down on my suppliant body. He kicked the living day lights out of me, he crushed me under a chair, and then enjoyed a good stamp on my head. Following which he tore out a clump of my hair with his teeth then, digging his fingers into my eyes, he raised my head and held my face closely over some dogs do, causing me to throw up. Ernest rubbed my cheeks in the unhappy mixture and then I swallowed both under his bidding; I was sick again; and again it was eaten; again this unwholesome repast appeared; again I consumed it; again it refused to stay down; again I embraced it; again I wretched it up; again I returned it to my inmost being; again it expressed itself; this orphan form entered and left me, entered and left me, entered and left me, entered and left me, entered and left me, entered and left me, entered and left me, entered and left me, entered and left me, like the never ceasing tide of an abject sea. Just before I fainted Ernest turned his attentions to my other end and penetrated my behind with a burning candle (like a cruel form of the New Age pile treatment I had spent a good deal of money on three months ago). He took my under carriage to the breakers yard and choked my hard on with one of his ties. I contemplated a Broke Back Mountain moment but Ernest had rather chosen to inflict a series of heavy blows on the back of my knees with selected blunt weapons and generally beat me senseless.

Ernest Black left me black and blue and bloodless. I spent a long time afterwards on life support machines in a fluctuating state of concussion and delirium, marked by incoherent rambling: "alas, poor albatross, there are no seas in Switzerland…".

The resentment at my misfortunes soon passed, however, for that was how I encountered the filthy nurse, Safie Rose, who was obliged to bestow her full attentions on my agonies.

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