He caught a disease. The following day he bought an expensive suit. It was dull grey and ill-fitting. Black Italian shoes finished or instituted the dull grey and ill-fitting suit depending on your sartorial viewpoint. The outré socks caused unrest. Thrice he was nearly beaten. It could all have been a misunderstanding. The second manifestation of this paltry disease was Vegetarianism. (He bought a second suit and a third suit, both dull grey and ill-fitting. He could not reverse the oneiric style. His bank manager sent him a red letter which caused penurious palpitations). The sight and the smell of uncooked and cooked meat induced incurable bouts of nausea, torturous nausea, searing nausea. Wild fulgurations of retching ruined his day and resulted in chiselled jowls. Cute chickens with laughing pigs and cavorting lambs danced in the space behind the eyes and between the ears. With Vegetarianism came Fletcherization. When rigor mortis set in he was having his photograph taken. It is eerie. It still rouses much talk. There is punctum but little studium. All agree that the bureaucratic disease is easily identified. Some say it is in the steady profound lips, others the dark deep eyes, most the thick black hair that was once blonde and thin. He wrote a letter to his girlfriend. The letter ended their relationship. (There is only darkness behind the eyes. You want to believe there is light, but there is only darkness. The journey from ear to ear is a journey through this impenetrable darkness). (He succumbed to bacon. The result was mind-perplexing-body-altering diarrhoea). The abstract disease was not sexual, but he did keep a locked wooden box under his single bed housing pornography. The key was kept in a secret place. In the box you will find 1. Bronzino’s Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time. (For nights of loneliness). 2. Boucher’s The Blonde Odalisque. (For nights of study). 3. Manet’s Olympia. (For nights of invention). 4. John Holmes anally inside of Aunt Peg. (For nights of mental fatigue). a. Voyeurism, jealousy, and sexual disorders plagued him with euphoric swellings, languid ennui, and efflorescent coats of sweat. b. Hours were spent navigating O’Murphy’s derriere. Agog, he lingered over the dark fissure while wild thoughts exploded like fireworks within. c. Wondrous nights were wasted inside Olympia’s grand bedroom living a Proustian flagrant lifestyle. d. Without a single thought he jerked off. The fifth manifestation of this mercurial disease was writing. During these bouffée délirante chapters, he wrote and sent many letters to his ex-girlfriend. The letters were heavily ornate and sexual in their design. He joined a gym. He exercised incessantly, working on his lower and upper body. (His dead father sneaked into his masturbatory fantasies). (All dreams were nightmares). (All jokes were mistaken for mysticisms). The sixth manifestation of the coruscating disease was servility mixed with a dreadful case of sycophancy. He lived in a city. It was narrow and winding and shadowy. There was calcification but no osmosis. Alienation was inevitable. He obsequiously opened doors, gave up his seat on the tram, and always stepped off the pavement for mothers with prams. Thrice he was nearly beaten. His apartment was tenebrous and small. (He exercised before work, during work, and after work). (His socks were popery red). (His persistent training resulted in an impressive carapace). (He finally read Proust). (White rice and cucumbers). (Only water). (He masturbated three times a day—without fail). There were one hundred and six chairs in the office where he worked and the only chair to mock him was his own chair. A betrayal of the worst kind. He wrote to his girlfriend about the chair. He told her the chair was an over-demanding father, an uncaring mother, and a yearning sister. Yes, yearning—yearning for freedom. His girlfriend wrote back and said the chair was simply a chair. ‘Chairs are not always what they seem,’ he wrote back. ‘One man’s relief is another man’s prison.’ She sent him a picture of falling snow. There were times when the chair visited him in his dreams. During these dreams, the chair was a vampiric libertine and he was a simple virgin. (Picture: John Holmes before the anal intrusion of Aunt Peg). (Work peers said his carapace was monstrous). (You want to believe light enters through the eyes, that behind your eyes there is light banked, and this light produces a kaleidoscopic orgy of colour, but this is a trick. It is mendacity. There is no light, no colour). The chair introduced him to Spanish Fly and sodomy. It was a one-sided relationship. Cruel. Demanding. Painful. His smile showed rotten teeth. The constant chewing and profound flatulence thrice resulted in a beating. He was beaten with fists, with a whip, with a chair. Not his own chair. The humiliation would have separated him from his soul. He worked reflectively. (Work may be good for the body, but the soul benefits nothing from work. The puritanical ethos of work being good for the soul cannot be validated. Work will not speed up your journey to the light of Heaven). The seventh manifestation of the jealous disease was the elusive orgasm. It floated over his king-size bed, like a phantasmagoric halitus, like a spiritual virga, awaiting a skint editor, a loyal friend. He sent flowers to his girlfriend with a letter saying they should marry. She agreed to the wedding. He wrote back and said that he no longer wanted to wed her. She wrote back: ‘Cunt!’ He decided to kill himself. He didn’t. In a hypnagogic haze, he masturbated and chewed a single walnut until exhaustion set in like death but not death. He never missed a day of work. His boss said, ‘You are a very good worker.’ He was indeed a perfect employee. (He lost three teeth and his tongue and gums were plagued with many oral diseases). (Seven psychosomatic diseases were made manifest under the dull grey and ill-fitting suit). (His laryngeal tuberculosis was cured). He was made into a Band Three and given a pay increase. He moved out of the apartment and into a country house. He never married. An obsession with sports cars and air travel took his mind away from his penis. His bank manager, over a cocktail and lobster, said, ‘You could do with a splash of colour.’ After an unbroken sleep, he awoke and discovered he had been transformed into an origami centipede. His lifestyle did not change.