Red Leeroy - The Struggle For Power

“Are you getting this Jeremy?”

Jeremy wasn’t listening. His mouth was open, he stood in awe, above him a man trussed up in what seemed to be a sex swing. He dangled awkwardly above a hushed room, he was hurriedly tweeting with one hand and gesturing wildly with the other, all the while dictating his life experiences to a now somewhat horrified journalist below. This man was Russell T. Rousseau, artiste, author, filmmaker, once notorious and now recluse would be genius.

“tweets, well quite frankly it was the worst of……… Jeremy are you getting this“?

“ yes yes, got it” Jeremy replied having missed the sentence completely, this might be Russell’s great unfinished interview if his skills in shorthand did not improve significantly. He peered up at the ceiling waiting for the next line, Russell spun uncontrollably in the harness gaining and losing speed as the leather straps coiled and uncoiled, he was cursing under his breath in French. Jeremy smiled to himself but unwittingly caught an unwanted and unobstructed view of the hanging scrotum, he looked away but the image had burned itself into his memory.

“Christ” Jeremy whispered to himself.

“Jeremy, I say Jeremy, there is a terrific disadvantage in not having the abrasive quality of the press applied to you daily. Even though we never like it, and even though we wish they didn’t write it, and even though we disapprove, there isn’t any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active press”

“Sorry Mr Rousseau ?” Jeremy asked.

Jeremy couldn’t concentrate. He desperately feared another trapped ant impression from above, the heaving chest, the hairy white limbs running in mid air trying to escape some sort of invisible amber, but there was only silence. The real and tangible need not to directly or indirectly see his interviewees genitals again ran through him, but he had another worry. His worry was that Russell was up above him and was slowly turning blue after another mishap with rogue arm cord. He raised his head and Russell was hanging perfectly still and looking down at him disapprovingly.

“JFK” Russell said with maximum dramatic effect.

“JFK“? Jeremy replied confused.

“J….F….K dear boy………….the quote” Russell seemed to become exasperated and begun to shift uncomfortably again. Then he cried out in a shrill voice  “Oh this is useless dear boy, useless, Libertee, LIBERTEE, come and release me from this self imposed leather purgatory”

Libertee scuttled in. He was a tall thin young man dressed in what Jeremy suspected was a sarong, he had seen David Beckham in one years ago, he felt pleased with himself that if asked he knew what this garment was called, and he was sure he would be asked.

Libertee unhooked the cable and began to lower Russell to the floor. “Gently Libertee gently, I am NOT a side of beef“. Libertee seemed to take no notice of his employer and the rope gathered pace as it slipped through his hands, he winced as the rope began to burn his fingers and he let go of it completely. There was a loud shriek from above as Russell re-entered the rooms atmosphere and plummeted to the ground, he hit the huge white couch covered in white fur and disappeared from sight over the arm. Jeremy and Libertee ran across the room to the now stricken Russell.

He was lying with one leg over the arm of the chair, and what looked like a serene expression on his face. “Are you okay?” asked Jeremy. There was a pause and then Russell let out another ear piercing scream “Libertee you incompetent queen” Libertee handed Jeremy a white dressing gown and backed away, Jeremy helped Russell up off the polished wooden floor. “Well then it’s settled you must stay for drinks” Russell said to Jeremy as Libertee was shooed away.

“but I was planning…….” Jeremy began his sentence but was cut short by a hand gently laid on his arm.

“I insist” Russell coed as he sashayed out of the room pausing only briefly to glare at Libertee.

Jeremy stood for a moment and peered back at the empty swing. This was either going to be the story of the year or a complete and utter disaster.

Hello and a happy new year to you all. Two thousand and ten has arrived and I enter it with a sense of hope and renewed vim. No vigour, just vim. Over Christmas I decided that I would embark on a mission that I had not attempted since my early 20’s. It was an experiment that I hoped would bring the lost years rushing back. Sadly, it has had exactly the opposite effect. What was this exciting new research and development? The growth of all the hair above my neck.

Growing your hair is an unusual process, facial and cranial grooming go out the window, razors are dis-guarded, and wives shoot you questionable looks when you remove your hat. What I remember about my
twenty six year old hair was its curly golden beauty, what I see in the mirror now is something similar to Tom Hanks in the final few scenes of Philadelphia. My beard now is a wonderful thick tricoloured affair that accentuates my Irishness, and may I say manliness. The hair however is a lost cause, like Tom Hanks trying to rescue Wilson on his way off that godforsaken Island.

In summing up I have decided to abandon the top half of the head, the hair will be back to number zero but the beard shall be cultivated, combed, trimmed, waxed and balmed for the foreseeable future. Then when it is thick and full I shall be as heroic as Tom……………………..well you know the rest.

Manly pursuits, that’s what I am all about, I base jump, tightrope walk, breathe fire and eat my enemies hearts all before I bellow my greetings to the cubicle buddies every morning. This is me, and there is no point in trying to change. Ok, I’ve changed. I am in fact a mediocre five a side football participant, player of squash, and occasional gym goer. This is fine but now the exercises are starting to take a back seat to a set of more and more obscure injuries.

Broken pride, a torn getupandgo, a slightly strained motivational abductor aside, now I feel like I have broken my metat………my metati………my David Beckham. I know it’s psychosomatic at best, but for two weeks I have been hobbling around like an old lady who just got off the bus to Lourdes, and is now desperately seeking a quick fire ecclesiastical cure for her gammy hip.

Have I gone to the doctor? no, of course not. Instead I have complained to Mrs Leeroy at every turn, I have tried alternative medical treatments, I have also tested the sitting on the couch eating canned food and not exercising method of rehabilitation, and I have even resorted to praying to my god. Let me tell you, Barry Manilow is a busy busy man.

After all my posturing and trying to be clever, all my aloofness and mockery of the underwater shopping expeditions down in Cork, I got up on this morning and began my Christmas shopping. I can hear Radge now, head in hands, bemoaning the fact that I have turned on him and let him down in his pseudo Christmassy type male bonding moment of need. Sorry old chap, but the 23rd was far too late for me. So I set my alarm for 4am and sat in my kitchen drinking whiskey and listening to Fairytale of New York and waiting for 9am to arrive.

My Christmas shopping very much resembles a Phil Collins record. It starts out with little or no thought to the actual result, solidly promises to be completely and utterly shit (and then promptly delivers exactly that). In short, it doesn’t even make the top forty. Enough with the Phil Collins metaphors I hear you say, but I think by now you have got the idea on what level of awful, hideous, and talentless idiocy my shopping skills fall into.

The list had been made. It was a start. A start made while drunkenly mistaking a tube of super glue for my missing optrex. So, with one eye glued half shut and the onset of a raging hangover, I headed into Hoggis Figgis. I was buoyed with the hope that for the first time in years I would not being careering around Grafton St at 6pm on Christmas eve, desperately hoping for inspiration in the basement of a Hardware Store. This didn’t last long.

Less than ten minutes later I was being hurriedly escorted out of the store by a large heavily built and heavily accented gentleman. My off the cuff quip to nearby priest regarding ‘paedophilia for dummies’ had not endeared me to staff or customer, and so with my copy of the Manga Kama Sutra stripped from my hands (no pressie for Auntie Amelia this year) I was tossed out into the street. I thought for a moment about going across the street to Waterstones, but I gave into the fact that any shopping prior to the 23rd is just not going to be allowed to happen. And so with a heavy disposition I gathered my thoughts and headed for the eye and ear hospital.

Now before I head into this post I will just out place a caveat firmly into place. I do care about the people under 6 feet of water in the “People’s Republic”, and if it was me I too would be in curled up on top of my wardrobe wailing and blaming Brian Cowen.

But you know what gets me most about the floods, it’s not the suffering on a grand scale, it’s not paltry 14 quid stolen from the dole funds to fight the problem, it’s not even the hilarious adverts on Newstalk telling people to head to to Caaaaark on the train for a rare old time.

No. What gets me most about this whole scenario are the flood victims on RTE news that come on and tell the world that their Christmas presents are now drifting somewhere off the Dingle peninsula, I mean who the hell does their Christmas shopping in November?

In January 2002 I returned home from Amsterdam to Dublin in a haze, well a fog, or a maybe a fuzz, I was fuzzy, or slightly hairy mouthed. I was also rich, not Bill Gates rich but I had ten grand not burning a whole in my pocket, the rent had been cheap, the salary had been good, and the weed had been free in Amsterdam.

I returned to my mothers door to be met with a look that seemed to me to be relief, I had left home a slightly unstable 23 year old and had returned a capricious 25 year old. As I mentioned I had money to spare and perhaps it may have been a good idea to head out into the real world and get a job straight away, but I had other plans.

Off on the horizon I saw the 2002 World Cup Finals, the competition glittered like a footballers giant diamond ear ring on a BBC post match interview. Ten grand, a roof over my head, and the possible fulfilling of my ambition to watch very single one of the televised matches of a World Cup. I managed to accomplish my dream. I awoke at 7am every morning, watched 90 minutes, then went back to bed and arose again at midday to watch a second game. The previous two years of white widow and sticky green don’t allow me to remember any of those footballing gods and their trickery, but rest assured I enjoyed every second of them.

Now my life has come full circle, redundancy beckons and a large last pay packet is coming in January, and low and behold a world cup not 5 months off in the distance. There has been a few small changes though, I no longer live with my mother, I have a mortgage and bills to pay, oh and I have a wife too. All these things apart I feel it might be possible to relive my 2002 dream in the year of our lord 2010, and once more see every wonderful free kick, last minute handball, and nose pukingly hilarious England semi final exit.

Can I dare to dream?