“So, when you’re out there and you meet this probable coke dealer, do you think there’s any danger you might get whacked?”

“Well, that possibility has crossed my mind, but I know I can make him more money.”

It was a Friday night in Croydon at about midnight. I was talking to my flatmate about my flight the next day to Riga. A two-night business trip, initiated after dealing with a Lithuanian bloke via a Latvian translator over Skype. One night in Riga being shown around by a bloke we will call A, then a drive on Sunday morning to Kaunas, Lithuania, to be hosted by the likely coke dealer.

At the time I was a poker product manager for a gaming firm in North London. Nine months in. After a shaky start, I was finding my feet. It was an office that largely fit William Goldman’s description of Hollywood: “Nobody knows anything.” What I did know, after six months, was that the deals the company had formed with poker affiliates were setting fire to money in some cases for both the affiliate and the company.

One such deal was with the affiliate in Lithuania. Call him R.

More or less every time his players played on the site, it was costing the company money. Poker sites make money by charging you a small fee to sit down. If you lose $100 in ten minutes, the site makes about $0.20. The company may have paid $30 to acquire that player. So: $100 deposited, $0.20 earned, $30 spent. Whoever sealed the deals hadn’t understood the key difference between poker and everything else the company offered. If a slots or blackjack player loses their $100, most of it goes to the house. A $30 acquisition cost makes sense. For poker, it doesn’t. You want break-even players, people who sit down hour after hour until the seat fees have chipped away their bankroll. Most players aren’t break-even.

I had worked out a better deal for both the company and R. Hence the trip.

R also managed a bricks-and-mortar casino poker room. That was his main method of recruiting players for the company. Aside from his other probable income stream, he was in a death metal garage band and had recorded a song about poker.

I arrived in Riga at about 6 PM. A picked me up at the airport. A was a decent person, working alone for our company in Riga and had a resting meme face. I checked into my hotel, a building haunted by Soviet ghosts and went out to see the city. By coincidence, it was the anniversary of Latvia’s independence from the Soviet Union. The atmosphere was intoxicating. Everyone seemed happy and glad to be alive.

Kaunas tomorrow. Tonight: the joy of not being in Kansas anymore.

Next morning we left for the drive to Kaunas. I don’t drive, but A was in cruise control with air-conditioned breeze and an on-off death metal playlist. We’d arranged to arrive after lunch. R was having what I was told was his traditional Sunday. He’d booked an out-of-town venue, hosted a pre-lunch basketball two-on-two tournament, eaten, then offered a poker tournament. A and I had been invited partly as an icebreaker before the business meeting Monday morning.

I’d declined the basketball.

I’m 5 foot 9 and much more of a badminton player.

We parked outside the venue. Wanting to be taken somewhat seriously, I was dressed business casual: I looked like every white, middle-aged stand-up comedian in Britain.

R greeted us floating basketball extreme casual. If the game had been skins versus vests, he was clearly the former: white basketball shoes and a pair of Texas Hold’em poker board shorts. Shaved head. Echoes of Steven Berkoff.

He was also hench. I am not hench.

He was not visibly perspiring. I was visibly perspiring.

He couldn’t speak English. I was temporarily unable to speak English.

R looked me up and down and said something to A. They both grinned. I was told the poker tournament was about to begin.

A was able to speak Lithuanian, Latvian, Russian and English which, to put it mildly, helped.

The lunch plates were still being cleared when we walked into the room hosting the tournament. The kind of place that looked like it hosted wedding receptions for the economically prudent couple. Long tables, adequate space between them and through a set of double patio doors, a moderately sized green space with a small pond.

One long table against the side wall was dedicated to vodka bottles and shot glasses. As I looked over, a player took a bottle and a glass and went to find his seat. A smaller table held beer. Unlike the vodka table, this one had no glasses.

I picked up a can of lager.

I don’t drink spirits. They scare me. I know where I am with beer. I can predict how I’ll feel after one, two, three. With vodka, I’d go from sober to unable to stand in under an hour.

As I watched another player select his bottle, I noticed I was the only person who had opted for a can.

A took a bottle and a glass. “Vodka, David?” He gestured to the table.

I smiled, shook my head.

He nodded. “That should be OK.” Then went to find his seat.

There were about sixty players, including A, R and me. Everyone paid €20 to enter. I paid from my own money.

At the first break, two hours in, about fifteen players had been knocked out, including A. I found him outside by the pond, vodka bottle in hand, about a third remaining.

During the first session I’d noticed a bear-sized man at another table. Loud, passionate, thirsty. Dressed in an outfit made famous by Orange is the New Black. He looked like he hadn’t been born as much as emerged fully formed from a blast furnace.

I asked A about him.

“Yeah. Everyone knows him. He’s ex-KGB and spent a few years in a Soviet prison.”

“Are those two things related?”

A smiled without opening his mouth, closed his eyes and nodded slowly three times.

I still regret I didn’t get a gif out of that moment.

“He gets upset when he’s knocked out,” said A.

The players were called back to their seats.

Two more hours passed. The field was down to about thirty, including R, the bear and me. I’d had four beers. The vodka table was at about 20% capacity. A was outside by the pond, smoking and laughing with the eliminated players, all of whom had booked to stay the night.

The second break came at about 6:30 PM.

Twenty remaining players. Three to four hours until a winner. Which meant forty drunk men with nothing to do, a possible vodka shortage and a pond.

It was time to return.

After about nineteen minutes we were at the final table of ten. I was seated opposite the bear, R to his left.

Just before we started, the bear proposed a toast.

Nine glasses of vodka raised. One can of beer.

The bear looked at me and shook his head rapidly. He growled something and gestured to the vodka table.

I offered a cheesy smile, shook my head, hoisted my can and looked around for A.

The garden had him.

The bear was still indicating that he would strongly prefer it if I drank vodka, if I would be so kind.

His gesticulations probably lasted less than a minute but felt, at the time, like I should be requesting a last cigarette.

Bravely, R put his hand on the bear’s shoulder and said something to him.

The bear looked to R, then to me, then back to R. Said what I guessed was a question while jerking his head in my direction.

R nodded.

The bear shook his head.

And then we did the toast.

I was very glad it was time to shuffle up and deal.

About an hour later I was knocked out in sixth place. R dealt the killing blow and I was partly pleased: I’d made the money and it wasn’t a bad thing for Monday’s negotiation that the affiliate had been the one to knock me out. But mainly I was pleased because I wouldn’t knock out the bear. He was currently in third. Two bottles of vodka deep.

I left the table to what I thought were good-natured jeers.

On the way to find A, I noticed the vodka table had been restocked. The beer table hadn’t needed to be.

He was in the garden near the pond. His bottle was half empty but his glass was half full. More than fifty happy drunk men were now milling around, the vibe late-stage wedding reception; one featuring two sets of families who liked or at least tolerated each other.

A’s ability to translate into English had become increasingly compromised as the day had gone on.

Even with five players remaining in the tournament, it could still take a while. I thought: did I want to still be hanging around, almost literally like a spare at a wedding, when the bear was knocked out?

I looked around the garden. Everyone was drunk. Drunk-happy, admittedly, but drunk. And still drinking. And with nothing else to do. And it was hot.

I had a premonition.

A vision of being held by four blokes, one at the end of each limb, stretched like a human hammock, with odds of somewhere between one in two and one in three of being launched into the pond. I even envisioned emerging with the obligatory small fish coming out of my mouth.

I can’t swim. I once dived into a swimming pool as a kid and my cousin’s review was that I’d gone in like a cow being surprised by a cattle prod. After that, fuck swimming.

So, for that reason and quite a few more, not least that being tossed in once arguably made a repeat more likely, I told A I needed to send a few emails and make some calls from my room and would see him at breakfast.

When he only tried once to dissuade me, I knew it was the right call.

I told him I’d finished sixth and perhaps he could collect my winnings from R.

My room was on the second floor, window facing the garden. Darkness had descended but the area was lit and I could hear the players below.

After about thirty minutes there was what sounded like good-natured uproar. Although I couldn’t understand the language, it was the bear’s voice. My guess: he’d just been knocked out.

Another fifteen minutes passed and I heard something like:

“With a woo… with a wee… and… a hurrah!”

Followed by something like, “Noooooooo” and about two seconds later by a large ker-splash and a lot of laughter.

I sighed with relief.

I pulled out my phone and texted my flatmate in Croydon.

Still not whacked.

He responded: ⏳ 🔫

In the evening there were about four more moments of “Whey!” followed by splash sounds. They slightly interrupted my ability to fall asleep. I still felt pretty good.

The next morning the room that had hosted the tournament had reverted to its normal role. It was about 8 AM. Six players, coffee, the sound of cutlery.

I was on my second cup when A appeared.

He was wearing sunglasses.

He also looked like a diluted Kermit the Frog.

I asked how the rest of the night had gone.

“I woke up lying on my back on the floor of my room. Totally naked.”

“Where were your clothes?”

“I couldn’t find them. So I gently opened my door and put my head out. Someone had tied my clothes into a bundle. On top of the bundle was a card. Someone had written on it my name and room number.”

He went to get breakfast and two cups of coffee. When he returned I said I’d already had two cups.

He had already started to move his scrambled eggs and jerked his thumb to his chest. Both cups were his.

The business meeting was scheduled for 11 AM in R’s poker room in a Kaunas casino. We’d been told to follow his car.

Before we set off, I asked A, who did not look like a man who wanted to be asked anything, if he could help me have a quick conversation with R.

I asked R for my winnings.

He suggested it would be a good gesture if I donated them back to the pool, to be shared with the other players, some of whom played online poker with my company’s product.

He had a point.

But in about an hour I’d be negotiating with him on his turf, using a translator to communicate. I didn’t want to concede the winnings. It was only €60. It wasn’t about the money. It was about communicating that I valued fairness and myself and I wanted him to know that before we talked business.

After about two minutes of translated exchange, he handed me the money.

He gestured that it was time to drive to Kaunas.

The meeting was in the back of the casino, past the slot machines and blackjack tables that line every route to a poker room: the games the house would prefer you played, the ones that take your money directly rather than letting you take each other’s. The same psychology that had produced the misapplied acquisition deals that brought me here in the first place.

Five sat around a poker table. The sixth fetched a bottle of vodka and six glasses.

I declined.

So did A. His sunglasses remained on. He still looked green.

After about two hours and four bathroom visits from A, we had a deal.

I joined R for a shot of vodka.

A didn’t.

We walked back to the car. A removed his sunglasses.

“I don’t think I can drive all the way back to Riga.”

Four hours. An informal meeting with Russian affiliates at 6 PM in a small Riga bar. My flight at 9.

“Here, take the keys.”

I don’t drive. He knew that, but I told him again.

“I know. But it’s easy. Plenty of people don’t have licences here. It’s OK. It’s an automatic.”

There was no way I was driving.

“How much would a taxi be?”

“No. Not taxi. I can’t leave my car. Just drive, it’s OK.”

Having apparently survived the prospect of being whacked, I was now facing the probability of being stranded in Kaunas.

“Have you got any water?” I asked.

He nodded and produced a half-litre bottle.

He understood.

He downed the water. We found somewhere selling sandwiches, ate them standing by the car.

He agreed to drive.

He put his sunglasses back on.

We made it to the bar in Riga on time, despite stopping twice for roadside strategic vomiting.

Him, not me.

I made my flight.

I made the affiliate more money. I made his players more money. I made my company more money.

And because of that, my disability was largely overlooked.

I have a right arm disability. No biggie, but I’m no pianist. It is mostly overlooked. But not always.

I feel other people’s reactions to it most keenly with strangers, particularly in pseudo-liminal spaces: a pavement, a car park, the queue at a till. Instead of eye contact and a nod, I get scrutinising looks aimed at my arm. Rarely, but often enough, I get asked: “Can you manage?”

It’s meant well. I’m usually asked when carrying bags and walking my dog.

And so I perform politeness. “I’m fine,” I say, with a thin smile.

What I want to say is: yeah, I can manage. In fact, I’m very good at it. Could you go to the Baltic States with a business proposal, hold your nerve through a slightly testing situation involving an ex-KGB man and a toast and know the exact moment to leave before you risk being tossed in a pond?

But yeah, of course I’m struggling with a bag of spuds and beans.

I don’t blame the people who ask. I’m not always irritated by them. But every time it happens I think about how quickly we form an opinion of someone’s capabilities and how completely that opinion can change if you can demonstrate you’ll make them money.

The company I worked for employed no women in income-generating roles and no people of colour. Everyone at the poker tournament in Kaunas was white and male. My disability was something to move past. I think about whether a woman or a non-white man sitting across from R in that room would have found the same reciprocity I did. I know it would have been a different room.

My dollar sign was legible to people who had already decided whose dollar signs were worth reading.

Those moments when strangers scrutinise my arm instead of meeting my eyes have given me a small insight into how women might feel when strangers look at their bodies rather than their faces. You stop being a person and become a feature.

I often felt, in any income-generating role, that what a company sees above your head is something like a health bar in a first-person computer game. Mine was high enough. I was given my chance.

Others were not deemed to have one.

Not yet whacked. Just very, very lucky.

If you think this is a damn fine piece, of writing, maybe you could buy me some beer. Just not vodka.

A quick note: this is an older piece, written for a poker blog and never published anywhere else. I’m putting it up now because next week I’m sharing something more personal, and it helps to share this first. A bit of background: I spent several years as a freelance poker writer and player. That’ll make more sense next week.

Good news everybody: I’m FingersMalone and here’s another blog.

It is enough to know, at this stage, that I’m English and emotional control deserts me when I spot a Bohemian-looking woman wearing a hat. As a consequence of the latter, I play poker surrounded by female mannequins, as their uniformity and baldness serve as a potent distraction minimiser.

The title of the blog comes, partly, from a fondness for film. I’ll explain more later, but first a bit about my nickname. I used to title myself after the first thing I spotted on my desk at the time of poker account creation, largely because dull, banal handles tend not to be in high demand.

Consequently, if you spot someone at the poker table called “MilkCarton”, “DentalFloss”, or “NeglectedGoalsList”, there is a fair chance that is me.

So I thought about names of characters from American fiction.

“FingersMalone” was born from the evolutionarily unlikely union of authors Damon Runyon and Raymond Chandler.

FingersMalone was meant to be mysterious, cool, sophisticated.

FingersMalone was not meant to pound the desk when the river completes his opponent’s flush.

FingersMalone was not meant to refer to himself in the third person.

Nor was he meant to aspire to be an adjective; but little did I know at the time of his conception, that I might need a theme, a structure and a goal for a poker blog.

People can become adjectives.

The expression “Fellinesque” was created because an Italian had such an individual style of filmmaking that people began to associate certain sights with his work.

I want future poker players to say, “Shit. You see that play? That shit was Malonesque”, preferably in the voice of The Wire’s Clay Davis.

It is a tough goal, I know, but I believe that, with lavish helpings of sickly “wind beneath my wings” metaphors, I can do it.

However, there may come a time when I have to accept that the best I can be is a noun.

If the act of calling the flop with nothing in an attempt to induce an opponent to check/fold can become known as “The float”, I think there could be a time when another play is called “The Malone.”

At the moment, there is a danger that it could denote the act of casually pushing all of your chips into the middle when your opponent has the nuts and watching them trouser all the cash.

Alternatively, “The Malone” could simply become the handle for the little window that appears and asks,

“Would you like to buy more chips?”

This Psychological Life is where I explore the stories we tell ourselves, often quietly, and often without realising it.

This piece came from a simple question I asked myself: Who am I, if I stop describing myself using nouns?

What follows is a spoken list, not of roles or labels, but the small things that give texture to an ordinary life.

It’s an experiment in noticing what matters.

You may find it works best if you listen.

Note

One of the goals of This Psychological Life is to explore the internal worlds we all navigate.

To that end, I would welcome any readers who would like to be interviewed and see their own psychological landscape featured here.

Privacy and Consent: I understand that discussing our internal lives requires a high degree of trust. I will never publish a final article without the full, explicit consent of the interviewee. Furthermore, if you would like to share your story but prefer to remain anonymous in the published version, I am more than happy to honour that request.

How to Participate: While I aim to speak with as many of you as possible, I do prioritise those who are Paid Subscribers to this Substack or those who choose to support my work via a donation on my Buy Me a Coffee account.

If you can’t pay, don’t worry: all subscribers are eligible for the interview series, and standard subscriptions remain free.

I look forward to hearing your stories.

It is about the New Year’s Day that forced me to face the stories I’d been telling myself and the stories I’d been avoiding.

New Year’s Day, 2014

I woke up at about 9am, not getting out of bed until 10.30, fifteen minutes after hearing her open a can of lager. We had bought twenty; only three remained, and I hadn’t had any.

Seventeen cans of lager, after three pints in the pub, on an empty stomach.

By 3pm, she would be shoeless on a doorstep in the rain, after I’d had her removed from my sister’s flat.

Five Months Later

I tried to make sense of it.
Eleven years on, I still am.

We think we understand life through rational thought, but we form stories instead. Our need for narrative is so essential that it can matter little whether a story is baseless, so long as it supports our vision of life.

The Three Christs of Ypsilanti illustrates this: three men who each believed they were the son of God were brought together to see if their delusions would cancel out. Their psychiatrist, Milton Rokeach, who oversaw the study, said:

The Christs clung to their narratives: when challenged, they quickly restored them, using the others’ inconsistencies as ammunition.

This rebuilding of narrative is rationalisation. Rather than conclude they were mentally ill, the men formed explanations: one dismissed the others as cyborgs, another said they were lesser Gods, the third simply patients.

I have, to date, never declared myself to be the son of God.

However, I have fought to maintain my own identity, ignoring others and forming stories to suit myself.

Failed narratives can lead to depression and stagnation.

That New Year’s Day left me depressed and stagnated.

Visiting London

I was visiting London for Christmas, staying a week and a half in my sister’s flat. Though based in Liverpool, I had lived in London for nineteen years and had friends there.

I invited a woman who was living in a traveller’s hostel to join me. We had a relationship, of sorts, when we first met. It didn’t work out but we stayed friends.

The year before, we spent four and a half months in Tenerife. Both self-employed, we could work anywhere with Wi-Fi. Roughly every two weeks, sometimes more, she became verbally abusive after drinking heavily on an empty stomach, always in our apartment.

The abuse was generalised, flaring without specific grievance. I could have been anybody.

I left Tenerife in late July; she stayed a further two weeks. It didn’t feel final but I felt, and I suspect she did too, relieved to be apart.

Reconnecting

We didn’t communicate for six weeks. Then my father died suddenly in September. Grief-stricken, I emailed her the news.

Gradually our emails grew more frequent. By early 2013, we spent a few nights together in Liverpool. Before Christmas, we met five times, each for a few nights.

Just after 1pm on the twenty-second of December, we met in a pub near Clapham Common. I was greeted with a smile. We spent a couple of hours, before doing some shopping and heading to the flat in Clapham North.

Tenerife, if not forgotten, was not mentioned. There were occasional hints of tension, but the time went smoothly. Christmas Eve was joyful; Christmas Day passed in a pleasant, unmemorable fashion.

This was the version of her I kept hoping would last. Sober, she could be sharp and funny. She had vitality, stories from her travels, a way of making ordinary moments feel alive. Walking through London or Tenerife, talking about films and writing, she was engaged and witty. Those moments were great. I kept believing they could become the norm. They never did.

New Year’s Eve

On New Year’s Eve, at 4pm, we went to a pub for a couple of hours before returning with refreshment, solid and liquid. We were back in the flat by 7pm and the conversation was great. At some point, I forget the specifics, something was said and we were back in the worst scenes of Tenerife.

We’d committed to the flat until January 2nd but during the abuse I told her that I wanted her out the next day. She slammed the lounge door. She went to the bedroom and talked to herself about me.

When she returned, close to midnight, the TV was broadcasting the build-up to the South Bank fireworks. She said she deserved to see in the New Year. When Ben bonged for midnight I said, “I know neither of us are with the people we’d like to be with, but Happy New Year.” That, as it deserved, received a scowl.

After more verbal abuse she went back to the bedroom. Thirty minutes later, I told her I wanted to sleep and she’d need to return to the sofa bed. More abuse. Forty-five minutes later I went back into the bedroom. I received more abuse, but she left.
I couldn’t sleep.

She stomped into the room.
She told me my sister “was buying cocaine from the guy upstairs”.
She said “I will kill you.”
She left and slammed the door.

New Year’s Morning

Then the morning.
The seventeen cans.
Hearing, “Can you stop burning toast? It fucking stinks”, as she walked into the kitchen with a can of lager.

“Have you made any effort to find somewhere to stay?”
“I’m staying.”

The exchange lasted about two minutes. I said, “Enjoy your can.” She accused me of oppressing her. I kept telling her that she had to leave. She made it clear she had no intention of going.

I messaged a friend who offered to assist with an unofficial eviction. That conversation ended at 12.45. He arrived at 1.45.

In the hour that followed, she repeated the cocaine accusation, threatened to call the police, and asked if my friend was coming to drive her somewhere. He doesn’t drive.

I told her he was coming to make sure she left.
I said, “It was only last night that I realised the depth of your mental health problem.”
She said, “You really don’t think you have a mental health problem?”

When the bell rang, things became more chaotic.

The Eviction

I showed my friend in. She was sitting cross-legged on the sofa listening to music on headphones connected to her laptop.
My friend said hello.
She turned and gave him a smile, as if she thought she could influence the situation.

He slid his hands under her armpits and lifted her.
Her laptop fell to the floor.
She said, “You don’t have to...”
He dragged her into the corridor.
He shut the door.
I said, “I didn’t expect that.”
He’d concluded it was best to move her immediately.

I started packing her case and kept saying “This is fucked.”
She was in the hallway of the converted house, wearing a sleeveless top and leggings. She was barefoot.

What followed was a series of increasingly absurd confrontations.

She demanded use of the toilet. I consented. She went in, talked to herself about me, and later I discovered she didn’t use it.

Then she tried to drag her suitcase back inside.
“Did you really think you could get rid of me?”
My friend blocked her way and gave her a slight push.
He was a foot taller and nearly nine stone heavier. She fell and sprawled face down on the floor like a TV show murder victim.
Her head clipped a small wicker basket where the residents kept leaflets. She wasn’t hurt.

When we were ready to leave, she was still in the corridor. My friend went upstairs to where she was sitting.
With more scorn than fear, she said, “Are you going to punch me in the face?”
He lifted her downstairs.

As I locked the flat door, I heard him say, “Come on, you can get to your feet now,” as he nudged her across the building’s threshold.
It was 3pm.

Outside

As she stepped outside, she blinked rapidly, as if emerging from solitary confinement, struggling to adjust to daylight.
She stayed under the porch, pressed her back to the wall and slowly sank to a crouch.
Her feet were still bare, her arms still uncovered.
The rain was atrocious.
She began to cry.

We left her.

We had four pints in two local pubs. At some point, it struck me that I didn’t know whether she had her duffel bag, the one she kept her laptop in. I know now she did because she emailed the next day. She wanted to know what had happened to her family photo album, the one her mum had recently given her and she’d shown me over the holiday.

I sent the album. I sent proof of postage.
But the tablet I was using didn’t send the email with the proof. I only realised this months later.
She received the album.
She never received the proof.
She must have thought I’d ignored her one last request.

Nine years of failed communication ending with one more.

Almost exactly a week after the day of madness, her album was delivered, via Royal Mail, to a hostel in Bayswater.
On Jan 3rd, she repaid £40 she’d borrowed. I strongly suspect she could not afford a room for the night of Jan 1st.
I think that the earliest she had access to money was Jan 2nd, when a £100 Christmas cheque from her aunt, was due to clear.

Aftermath

On Saturday 4th, the friend who helped me messaged:

“I have mixed feelings. Throwing her out wasn’t very nice, but if I hadn’t, it would have reinforced her habit of exploiting people. Her reaction suggested this wasn’t her first unofficial eviction.”

He could have been describing my feelings.
And I shared the impression in his final point.
The combination of her body language on the day of the eviction and her lifestyle suggests that she had had previous experience of being thrown out.

She moved frequently between locations, often staying with friends, “couch-surfing”, via a website. Her drinking also increased the likelihood of past evictions.

I’d already seen her erupt in a similar way towards another male friend after drinking heavily on an empty stomach. They usually spend Christmas together, but last year it was clear they’d fallen out.

She’d also mentioned a male friend from university who’d asked her to leave his home in Sheffield in January 2013 and then cut contact.
When I asked how she felt about it, she shrugged: “A year is nothing in an eighteen-year friendship.”

On the day of the eviction, I accepted my friend’s offer of help. I rationalised it by telling myself she deserved to be thrown out and it was better, for me, to use a third party.
That was a mistake.
He should feel no guilt.
He used an acceptable level of force, didn’t hurt her and her welcome had been withdrawn.

It’s my behaviour that needs scrutiny.

Self-Reflection

Throughout the day, my thinking was: I’ve had enough, the stress must end, she’s being evicted, it’s all her fault.
In my mind she was a cyborg, a lesser God or a patient in a mental hospital.

It was, of course, a self-serving picture. It freed me from responsibility. During the chaos I framed it as a game, something tactical, something I had to win at her expense.

I began to wonder if part of me, after Tenerife, craved a payback in which she was humiliated:

Five months later I still think that’s possible. When I left her outside of the flat, I felt an urge to say something that would rub her situation in her face.
I didn’t.
I just left her.
I achieved her humiliation but outsourced the dirty work.

It wasn’t that I thought that she was blameless.
But I wondered why I’d found myself in the situation.
Why had I ignored other people’s warnings?
Two days before Christmas, the friend who helped me said, about my holiday plans, “That’s got disaster written all over it.”
He wasn’t the only one to who’d expressed doubts.

In the past, I’d explained away inappropriate relationships by saying I was drawn to unconventional people because they were more interesting.
I’ve realised that was wrong.
The people I have been drawn to are unconventional, but also inappropriate.
I find inappropriate women attractive and appropriate women unappealing.

Why?

Games People Play

To work out why, I read Games People Play by Eric Berne, in which he outlines transactional analysis and how it can be used to scrutinise relationships. One of the games he describes is “Uproar”.

Traditionally, it’s played between a domineering father and a teenage daughter. She returns home after an evening out and he finds fault with her appearance or behaviour. Voices rise, tempers escalate and it ends with the slamming of a door to reassert the territorial boundaries of separate bedrooms. Although it’s clearly not ideal, it can act as a solution to the sexual tensions in certain families.

It can also be played by two adults seeking to avoid sexual intimacy.

Two other games Berne describes are “Rapo” and “Kick Me.” In the former, the woman flirts but derives gratification by rejecting the man’s advances and witnessing his humiliation. However, the man is usually a willing participant, someone who has gone to some length to involve himself and is often playing a version of the latter game.

“Kick Me” is a game in which the player, usually a man, conducts himself as though he’s wearing a sign reading “Please Don’t Kick Me”. When the inevitable happens, he cries, “Why does this always happen to me?”

Players are usually life’s losers.

They ensure their income never rises above a certain level.

If they receive a windfall, they find efficient ways to dispose of it, thus preserving their internal psychological state.

They also tend to live vicariously through other people’s experiences.

My friend enjoyed flirting and then rejecting my advances.

I didn’t walk away: instead, after each humiliation, I thought, “Why does this always happen to me?”

Some players of “Kick Me”, after many bad experiences, begin to ask “What did I really do to deserve this?”

According to Berne, that can “lead to personal growth in the best sense.”

This piece is partly my effort to ask that question, to make sense of what happened at the turn of the year, to try to be the person who can observe external and internal realities then say:

“I am not the Son of God.”

External and Internal Realities

Firstly, then, an external reality: I have a congenital disability that affects my right side. I have asymmetrical shoulders, a withered arm and a weaker leg.

Now, an internal reality: I am self-conscious about my nakedness.

I don’t mean a general shyness common to many people. I mean a specific dread of being seen. Of the asymmetry being visible. Of the withered arm exposed. Of someone’ expression changing when they see me without clothes.
Of pity. Of revulsion.
Of awkward kindness.

That makes you choose relationships carefully.
That makes you grateful for flirtation that never demands follow-through.

I think I know why I didn’t leave the games of “Rapo” and “Uproar”: I was engaged in an act of self-preservation.
I would spend time with a woman I found attractive, enjoy the thrill of flirtation, but also know that her rejections meant that I would never have to take off my clothes.

I am wary of sexual intimacy because I’m self-conscious about my disability.

It arguably follows that I would choose to spend time with someone who lives an unconventional life, likes to talk about it, and enjoys mocking me.

I was maintaining dynamics that suited me.
Nine years.
Four and a half months in Tenerife.
Multiple visits.
Christmas together.
All the while, playing games that kept me safe from the vulnerability of intimacy while giving me the appearance of a relationship.

The Abuse Was a Feature

The abuse wasn’t a flaw in the relationship.

It was a feature.

It ensured we’d never get close enough for me to undress.

The weeks that followed New Year’s Day were marked by depression and stagnation. My only thought was to blame everything on her, like the Three Christs of Ypsilanti attacking each other’s logic, while shoring up their own delusions.

It took about two months for that inclination to pass. A further three months of reflection and reading were needed before I could form what I hope is a balanced interpretation.

It was a lose-lose situation.
She suffered a deeply humiliating unofficial eviction and was put at personal risk partly because of my inability to leave the relationship.

Given the aftermath of the rows in Tenerife and knowing she’d had similar encounters with other friends, I should have stayed one more night in the flat then told her on January 2nd that our friendship was over.

I regret what I didn’t do.

I regret what I did.

I cannot be sure if I’ve tried to make sense of what happened through rational contemplation or through narrative bias.

Even if it’s the latter, I’m confident it isn’t baseless.
I can admit to flaws in a way I couldn’t before the eviction.
I have a better idea of who I really am and can now try to change.

I am not the son of God.

I am a patient in a mental hospital.

But that won’t be the end of my story.

Postscript

I drafted this in May 2014, five months after the events described.
Reading it now, eleven years later, I can see how hard I was working to break through my own rationalisations.
The Berne games, the disability revelation, the recognition of my complicity: these were real insights.

But there was more I didn’t know then.

I didn’t know that my father’s death in September 2012 had opened a hole in the mat of my life.

I didn’t know that walking had become my primary way of avoiding grief.

I didn’t know I’d spend the next six years walking away from everything I’d lost:

• My father;

• Her;

• My friend Ash, who died five months after that New Year’s Day;

• My mum who would die in February 2017;

• Henry the dog, who would die in December 2020.

I didn’t know that when Henry died, I’d finally have to stop walking and face everything.

This piece was one layer.

There will be more.

But on this New Year’s Eve, eleven years later, I can say, I know myself better than I did then.
Better than I did five months after.
Better than I did last year.

I’m still a patient in a mental hospital, in some ways.
Still working out who I really am.
But I’m not standing still anymore.

Added on New Year’s Eve

This loose sequence of writing is now complete. There are two light references to previous posts in the series. I didn’t include the links in this post as I didn’t want the reader to be distracted.

However, if you ate interested, they are here and here.

The series was influenced by a piece of advice given to people writing personal essays:

I think we all have them.

I grabbed mine by writing about them. In doing so, my vulnerabilities stopped feeling like things that could be used against me.

I don’t know what your snakes might be.

But I suspect that facing them can dull their venom.

When I began this series, I was overwhelmed by the support I received from people close to me.

You know who you are.

What you may not realise is how much that support mattered.

It helped neutralise the “unwrapped presents.”

On the eve of a new year, I want to say thank you.

You made a difference.

All the best for 2026.

Author’s Note

Thank you for reading. If this resonates with you, I’m grateful you found it.

If you would like to support my work, maybe you could buy me a coffee.

Note: This was drafted last year.

As Christmas Day’s significance slipped away, the solstice gradually took on new meaning.

Christmas and I parted ways long ago.

Christmas 2012, in Surrey, was the first since my dad died in September.

That was significant.

My solo Christmas in Glasgow, with Henry the dog for company, was another turning point. Glasgow looked stunning that day, the sky glorious, the dog walks invigorating. Even the films I watched felt meaningful.

But what made it truly significant was the sense of crossing a line.

I’d stopped pretending Christmas mattered.

Up to the age of 12, I loved Christmas.

Then came the year of the unwrapped presents: a small detail, but one that left me crying in the toilet.

Once you’ve done that on Christmas Day, the holiday loses its sparkle. The years after blur into sleety mornings and half-remembered hangovers, softened only by pub visits with mates on Christmas Eve.

Our family Christmases weren’t exactly the Star Wars Holiday Special, but they were close: awkward, strained, people pretending to have a most wonderful time. My brother occasionally brought his kids, but even those moments could carry tension.

Most years, it was the same cast: me, my sisters, my parents, and sometimes my aunt. She was, bluntly, an awful guest who never hosted. Even my dad didn’t like her, and he liked almost everyone.

When my brother stopped bringing his kids, the table felt sparse. Three middle-aged siblings and two seniors clinging to tradition, like passengers on the bus to Abilene, everyone going along with it, thinking they had to.

A two-generational Christmas without fresh faces.

And so, I turned my attention to the solstice.

The winter solstice is simple: the days stop getting shorter. No gifts, no expectations, no awkward conversations. It happens quietly, without fanfare, and yet it carries a real, undeniable promise: more light is on the way.

Lately, though, the solstice has felt heavier.

I turned 53 this year. In the calendar of life, I’m in September or October. This year, I’ve felt it keenly. A school friend passed away at 53. My brother, now 62, is retired.

I exercise, but I also drink and smoke. I’m lonely in ways I don’t know how to fix.

And yet, there’s resilience I didn’t have before. Less childishness. More focus.

When I started this piece, I intended it to be positive: a celebration of progress and growth.

Instead, it became an exploration of memory, meaning, and where I am now.

But that is progress too.

This solstice is darker than most. Heavier with mortality. Shadowed by loss and loneliness.

But I’m not waiting for Christmas to mark the turn anymore.

I’m marking it myself.

The days stop getting shorter today.

That’s real.

That’s enough.

The light is coming back.

OUTRO NOTE

The light did come back.

But first I had to stop walking away from the dark and face what I’d been avoiding for six years.

That story comes on New Year’s Eve.

(If you would like to support my writing, you can buy me a coffee here.)

Note: This piece was drafted last year.

It was two in the morning. I’d just come back from my friend’s place, four pints in me, that loose feeling alcohol brings. The house was dark except for the kitchen light. She was at the table doing the cryptic crossword from The Times, cigarette burning in the ashtray next to her mug of hot milk. She often had insomnia.

I sat down opposite her. She didn’t look up, still focused on the crossword, pencil hovering over the grid. I don’t know why I asked, maybe the beer, maybe the lateness, maybe because my friends were pairing off and I felt like I was watching life happen to other people.

“Will anyone ever love me?”

She put the pencil down then and looked at me. “When you meet the right girl, it won’t matter.” I nodded, said something like “yeah, okay,” and went to bed. But I remember her words, the smoke, the half-finished crossword, and all I could think about was the part of me I had always tried to hide.

I heard your wrongness won’t matter to her.

I heard you’re fundamentally unlovable, but someone desperate might settle.

I heard being yourself means being alone.

I don’t know what she actually meant. Maybe she meant I’d find someone who loved me as I was. It was definitely meant as comfort.

But I was eighteen, sitting at that kitchen table at two in the morning, four pints deep and asking the only question that mattered. I learned the lesson I carried for years: being myself meant being alone. The only question was whether I could bear it, or whether I’d need something to make it survivable.

My sense of not belonging has deep roots. My family carried low self-esteem mixed with a peculiar pride in our intelligence. We were smart, but that intelligence often failed to translate into confidence or contentment. I was the youngest of five and felt like an afterthought, the surprise child nobody knew what to do with, where he would fit in.

A voice saying “you can’t” still echoes. It pushed me to help others instead of myself, to make myself useful. Being myself felt dangerous, like it might confirm the fear that I wasn’t enough to justify taking up space. So I watched the men in my family drink and saw the ritual as peace and reward. My uncle’s quiet pleasure in pouring a beer fascinated me. The tilt of the glass, the satisfaction in his face, as though he had earned being himself. My father drank, in moderation, daily without losing control. There was dignity in it, a permission to relax.

I absorbed that, associating alcohol with belonging, calm, and male identity. But I missed something. They drank from a place of already belonging. I drink from the opposite place, trying to create the belonging I never felt or numb the absence of it.

It started with four pints. I became Four Pints Fitz, going out with mates, nineteen in 1990. The beer adverts had it right: two looked gay, three looked odd, four looked cool. Five? That just reminded me of my place in the family, the surprise child who didn’t fit. Four was enough. It let me belong, mask my awkwardness, and be the person I was expected to be. Four was perfect for the round too. Somewhere in all that, the origins of Four Pints Fitz were set: a measure, a ritual, a way to move through the world.

Rituals endure, and their consequences last. This one has stayed with me for decades.

The cycle is familiar. Wake after poor sleep caused by drinking, hate how I feel, get attacked by the inner critic, lose motivation, do less good work, feel stuck and lonely, and reach for a drink again. I’ve drunk from boredom, to ease social unease, to bond, to tolerate company I didn’t connect with, and alone because I feared being myself would hurt those I love.

Frustration triggers the urge most. A conversation where I feel diminished, someone talking over me, dismissing an idea, making me feel invisible, and I’m already planning the evening’s drinks. A poker session gone wrong feeds the inner critic immediately: You’re not good enough. You never were. Everyone can see it.

Alcohol offers temporary relief. Not from hating myself, because I don’t, but from the exhausting work of defending myself against that voice. Four beers quiet it for a few hours, letting me exist without the constant negotiation between who I am and who I think I should be. That only lasts so long. Sometimes what matters more is simply being with someone who doesn’t expect you to perform.

Recently, I saw my friend Stu, whose brother Graham is terminally ill. Graham was the friend whose house I’d been at that night, the one I left at 2am to find my mum at the kitchen table. Stu and I built our friendship in London years ago, but now he lives there and I’m back here.

We met at The Coop, a micropub. I was wearing camo combats, which he hadn’t seen before.

“Hey Dave. How was Fallujah?”

We had a couple of pints, then moved to an old-fashioned suburban boozer, the kind of male-dominated place where everyone knows the unspoken rules. Four beers in total. Stu took a photo of my dog to send to his daughter. Then we talked about Graham.

I watched Stu’s face as he spoke, how he tried to hold it together without hiding what he felt. There was no performance. He wasn’t managing my reaction or protecting me from his grief. He was just there. Present. And because he was, I could be too.

Graham, always self-compassionate and morally grounded, had influenced me for years. That evening reminded me of mortality, loss, friendship, the things that matter when you strip away the performing. Even with alcohol present, I felt secure, connected, valued. Not because the drinking helped, but because I could be myself with Stu, and he could be himself with me.

I played poker afterward with focus and emotional control. The difference wasn’t the alcohol. It was that I had spent the evening being myself rather than managing someone else’s version of me.

I don’t have an addiction. I don’t have a drink problem. I have an unhealthy ritual. I am lonely, and I can drink too much even when I am being myself.

I have been stalled on a bridge between who I was taught to be and who I am. Alcohol doesn’t help me cross. It just makes standing still more bearable. The ritual promises peace but delivers only temporary relief.

Last night I bought four cans of lager.

That insight doesn’t fix anything, but it shows me where to start looking.

(In memory of my mum and Graham Rothwell.)

If you would like to support my writing, you can buy me a coffee here

My mum taught Classics.
I’ve seen HBO’s Rome, but I mainly just remember the sex.
Not the lasting lessons for societies.

I was in the remains of a Roman baths in Bearsden, a suburb of Glasgow. There’s a shortcut used by some councillors: to obtain a rough socioeconomic snap of a community, you count the number of cafes, then the chicken shops, and the resulting ratio is your take.

More cafes, more cash. More chicken shops, more Coke.

If the ratio is close, the neighbourhood is transitional. A community in the midst of a war between cash and Coke.

Bearsden? It’s a cappuccino conquest.

The remains of the Roman baths are in an enclosed area. They are in front of a brown-brick block of maisonette housing. The area is peaceful despite its proximity to the busy Roman Road. The atmosphere reminds me of the place in which my parents are interred: a rose garden attached to a Catholic church in Crosby, Liverpool. It is the presence of nature, a lack of advertising and the sense of communal purpose. A place of harmony, monuments, and maisonettes.

If I believed in ghosts, I’d think of them as benign. Places like this feel like truces between past and present. Maybe that’s why I like them. But not that day in the Bearsden baths. I felt a chaotic disharmony bubble in the percolation of past and future that was obscuring my appreciation of the present.

Bearsden Roman baths is a preservation site. Having cared for my mum while she was dying, I wonder if there comes a time when preservation becomes pointless. Perhaps she wondered too.

Me?

I also wondered who the hell wants to live until they are 95?

People who are 94.

I thought about preservation in terms of the old family home, too. The homes of the elderly usually stay decorated in a fashion fixed at the time just after their last child left.

The parents celebrate the “Thank fuck, they’re now all off the books!” delusion with a splurge on interior design. It’s often their last major decoration and it becomes the first snapshot of the Death House, although it could still be two or three decades before they die.

It’s one thing to preserve a home. Another to become one.

And, well, that was me. A personification of the Death House. Existing in the present, but with the style of the past, and no blueprint for the future. An interior designed by the noughties. An exterior cloaked in habit. A preserved bath surrounded by post-war housing.

Preserved. Not living.
That was 2019. A year later the bubble would burst.
But standing at those Roman baths, I didn’t know that then.
I just knew something was wrong.

I was wrong about ghosts being benign.

If you think this is a damn fine piece, of writing, maybe you could buy me a coffee.

Or a Coke.

I’m in a transistional neighbourhood.

I’m on an upward bridge and I’m being deafened. The bridge is above a dual carriageway, parallel to a busy road. Cars roar past, unsettling. My dog is walking ahead of me on an extendable lead. Somehow, she’s got about thirty feet ahead. We’re on a narrow pavement and cars are racing towards us. The dog could wander into the road and be hit. Her lead keeps extending. I’m powerless to stop it.

The dog has gone over the top of the bridge and I can’t see her. My stomach is clenching. The lead has reached its longest extension, and I can’t retract it. I sense the dog has stopped. I’m paralysed. But I need to make sure she’s okay.

I step forward and make it to the top of the bridge.

My dog is in a joyful embrace with a large, cuddly white dog. They look like dance partners. It’s a picture of bliss.

I wake up. I feel flat. Confused. I had assumed the only thing the dog could be moving towards was danger. I had no vision of joy.

I’ve been walking dogs since 2012. First Henry in Glasgow, who died a few years ago. Now Peanut. When I was struggling for writing ideas in 2019, I started something called The Walking Diaries. After the bridge dream, I went back to them. Here’s what I found.

That year, I’d been using a quirky guidebook to Glasgow for things to see in the city. One entry was in my neighbourhood: a post box. The post box is apparently rare enough that enthusiasts will travel hundreds of miles to see it.

So Henry and I went to see it.

I got there.

I thought, “Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.”

There’s a line from psychiatrist Eric Berne: “The destiny of every human being is decided by what goes on inside their skull when they are confronted with what goes on outside their skull.”

At the post box, I thought about that line. I also thought about what must be going through Henry’s head. He was clearly stimulated. He was an enthusiast for the smells of dog urine at its base. I wondered which was worse: becoming a post box spotter or an enthusiast for dog piss.

Henry was absorbed. He’d have probably been just as happy with a bin. Or maybe not. Maybe his nose offered him a seasoned understanding of the hierarchy of piss.

Berne’s insight: the meaning wasn’t in the object. Not the post box. Not the piss. It’s the “Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.”

Berne also renamed Freud’s internal cast list.

Not superego, ego, id.

Parent, adult, child.

Ideally integrated, and in harmony.

In my life they look something like this:

The storyteller makes the world interesting.

The carer asks how you are.

The player rolls the dice and turns up.

They don’t collaborate often.

They compete.

The player tells the storyteller the probability of becoming a published novelist.

The storyteller tells the player his poker opponent probably has a monster hand.

The carer tells the player that poker is for degenerates.

The player tells the carer that he’s subordinating his own needs.

The storyteller whines that he can’t use the carer’s material because of some ethical bullshit, or whatever.

It’s less a team than a dysfunctional family.

They do, however, share a message:

Don’t.

Don’t write.
Don’t risk.
Don’t change.

Don’t cross the bridge.

Stay here, where you’re comfortable populating your own head with fears.

At least you know what those fears are.

But the dream suggested something else: the dog had crossed without me.

Part of me was already there.

That dream came after the others, the ones about being frozen at crossings.

It came after I became a therapist.
After I took an honest appraisal of my poker mistakes.
After I started this Substack.

On the dog walk this morning, Peanut stopped at the kerb and looked back at me.

I looked at her.

She looked across the road.

We stepped off the kerb.

We crossed the road.

Nothing happened.

It was just to get to the other side.

No lesson.

No symbol.

Just movement.

I think I am in bridge mode now.

In 2020, I Googled, “Am I having a nervous breakdown?”…

The covid-19 pandemic continues with UK lockdown easing despite some of the scientific community arguing it’s too early. The world is also in the second week of protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd. Trump had police fire teargas into a peaceful protest outside the White House so he could walk to a nearby church for a photo opportunity.

On Sunday, I took a gut punch. Messaging with someone I care about, I finally had to acknowledge something I’d been refusing to see: she doesn’t want a deeper connection with me. At least three times in the last three years she’s turned down attempts to raise the intimacy level. Each time, I decided to not acknowledge it, because I needed the fantasy to remain sane. I needed to believe it was still possible.

When the fantasy collapsed, the ground went with it.

I spent most of Monday in bed. When I finally moved around the kitchen, I felt compressed, like I had an iron on my chest. I thought I was at risk of collapse. Even now, days later, when I go outside, I feel like I’m swaying on unsteady legs. I don’t think my anxiety has ever been this high.

Here’s what I keep thinking about: the night my dad died, eight years ago, I was standing at the back door of my parents’ house. There was a mat there, rubber, rectangular, with connected hexagons. I looked down and saw, in my imagination, my social network, the perimeter intact, but with a round hole blasted through the middle where my dad had been. I thought it would take time to reform. Existing relationships would deepen. New ones would be made.

Today is the day my mum would have turned eighty-four. This week I turned forty-nine. The hole never closed. My mum died a few years after my dad, and the mat never recovered its shape.

The fact that it was a mat, something people put their feet on, is psychologically interesting to me. Right now, I feel unsupported and groundless. Can it be a coincidence that now I acknowledge the hopelessness of forming a deeper connection, and the terminal damage to my figurative mat, that I now feel like I’m about to fall?

I don’t have an answer to that Google search yet. I’m still waiting to see if the ground holds.

Or maybe I’m standing in the middle of the road, doing the arithmetic, while the light changes

.

“And now, those that are able to, stand up.”

The hymn began.

How Great Thou Art.

The camera held its wide shot.

I was watching the service on an iPad, in the kitchen, next to a half-chopped onion.

The deceased was forty-six. Diagnosed in August. Gone by October.

I didn’t know him. I know his brother and his brother-in-law. His tributes boomed through the tinny speaker with a kind of warmth that felt larger than the room I was in. Healthy, funny, generous, loved.

Somewhere between the onions and the eulogies, my eyes filled. I realised I wasn’t only moved.

I was scared.

Scared that I might be turning into a hearse-chaser, someone drawn to the grief of others just to feel something of his own.

When the stream went to black, I left the kitchen and opened a cupboard in my bedroom. Opening it after watching such a moving service of a well-lived life, I felt like I was looking at a curated exhibit in the Museum of Unfulfilled Ambitions.

Shelf 1: a large, plastic blob that suckers onto your stomach and fires electric pulses into your abs. Twenty settings. I think I got as far as level nine.

Shelf 2: a Portuguese phrasebook, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Dummies, The Mental Game of Poker, a stretched, saggy, chest-expander.

Shelf 3: five Leuchtturm A5 notebooks (different colours, unbroken cellophane), a peculiar, knobbly device for exercising feet, a black baseball cap printed with the word Writer.

During the funeral, the testimonies to the deceased had been excellent and moving. He had helped people. He had worked hard and brought people together.

He had loved.

His life was curated by generosity.

Mine?

By Amazon Prime.

I’m fifty-four, which, according to psychologist Erik Erikson, is about the time life sets you a choice: generativity or stagnation.

Generativity is his word for creating, mentoring, giving something back. Stagnation is the slow drift into self-protection and repetition.

Put less clinically, it’s the difference between still directing the play and realising you’ve been on stage for years playing the hat-stand.

Looking at the ‘museum’ shelves, I realised I’d been curating the props of stagnation, all the gear of a man preparing to live but never quite starting.

Someone younger, someone who played his role with generosity, had been taken off the stage eight years before me. I have been the hat stand for longer than those eight years. And while I’ve been shuffling around with bags full of branding, he had been fully in the play.

Watching the service made me realise how long I’ve been standing offstage, waiting for permission to join in, waiting for the green man, perhaps.

I had waited.
The cars had moved on.
I stood still.

The road was clear.

But I wasn’t.

But I know this:

I don’t chase the hearse.
I won’t chase the hearse.

The task now is to join the procession of the living and keep that green man flashing in ourselves, for our own sakes, and for those from whom it flashes no more.

I’m in the dark and it’s raining.

I’m at a major London crossroads.

The road spans are wide and cars move rapidly. The green man signal is on when I arrive but starts to flash, indicating time for a safe crossing is ending.

I dash forward.

Halfway through I realise I’m not going to complete the journey before the cars start.

I stand still, with my shopping bags. I try to work out how to strategically move so I can complete my journey without being hit by a car.

I wake up.

It isn’t the first time: I have dreamt versions of this scene five times in the last two months. Once there was even a mermaid flapping helplessly in front of a chippy. Sometimes there is a friend with me, sometimes not. Sometimes it is daylight, sometimes it’s wet and dark. The pattern is always the same: I reach the middle and hesitate. Or walk into the window of the chippy.

I love walking. When I wander around a city I feel like an anthropologist on asphalt. But.

For years I have avoided crossings in real life. Large junctions are testing. I stand at the kerb, my pulse quickens, the red man turns green, then I walk quickly without looking up. It is manageable, yet it seems to represent something larger. When I started to write down these dreams, I realised they were not about traffic. They were about time.

The flashing green man is not warning me to stay still. He is reminding me that permission to move is temporary. The safe passage across the road, like the safe passage across a life, never lasts long. The moment for action is always shorter than we expect.

In the dream I am carrying the usual baggage: poker, therapy, writing. Each is heavy enough on its own; together they slow me down. I am halfway between who I was and who I might be, doing mental arithmetic while the light changes.

That image of calculation in the middle of danger feels accurate. I have often lived as if thinking could replace movement, as if reflection itself were a kind of crossing. Yet the dream suggests otherwise.

The cars do not wait for insight.

When I first told a friend about the dream, he laughed and said it sounded like the brain’s polite way of shouting “get on with it.”

No shit.

Mortality rarely arrives in gothic costume.

But it can be a green flashing man.

The green man, in this sense, is not an omen but a teacher. He tells me that caution has a cost, that standing still too long becomes its own danger. He flashes to remind me that thought without movement is, again, fear.

The invitation, I think, is simple. Move before the red light ices you.

Write the thing, play the hand, make the call, cross the road.

Do it knowing the timing will never feel perfect.

Do it with the bags you are already carrying.

Ask not for whom the green man flashes.

For he flashes for thee.

Share

I’ll tell you how it is. I’m wise. I’m someone who gave up a regular income to play online poker. But that’s not when I realised I was wise. That epiphany arrived on my last day of work. Nothing said “You’re a pillar of wisdom” like receiving leaving gifts of: a cigar, a Zippo, wine, and seventies-era pornographic playing cards.

Therefore, please accept my well-qualified guiding hand as I flag the signposts on your pathway to wisdom. Think of me as the ghost of your clueless future and allow me to shed light on darkness.

The first step to wisdom is to stop denying you have a problem. Maybe you don’t have a problem. But, then again, how many people do you know who don’t? The tapestry of life is knitted with problems. Solve one and another usually unravels within a few days, niggling away at your happiness.

To clarify, I’m not referring to life-threatening problems. I’m guessing, if you’re lucky enough to be reading this, you know where you are sleeping tonight. I’m referring to lifestyle-threatening problems.

Typically, these involve issues of love, community, sex and status. Over time, they can erode your quality of life. They sabotage your behaviour in certain situations, particularly when you’re unsettled. They can make you aware that your life could do with fine-tuning.

You might detect a pattern of behaviour that can leave you emotionally bruised. At this stage you might seek out the wisdom of Google. Let’s say you type, “Why am I…” and complete the question with your problem. You read stories from a range of people experiencing the same issue. You’re heartened. You feel less alone.

However, the next time you are in the trigger situation the issue recurs. You know others battled through your issue but that isn’t enough. You realise you need more. The question hasn’t gone away.

Step Two: Do Some Psychological Forensics

So, inspired by the personal stories, you’ll probably sense the second step to wisdom: the need to do some psychological forensics.

Think about events that might be important to the origin of the problem. Here’s a smattering of key moments from my life that have caused later difficulties: ball-bearings thrown at the face of my sister; a bout of anxiety attacks provoked by walking over bridges; attending a fancy-dress party as Obi-Wan Kenobi wearing a costume that incorporated a fluorescent tube and a dishcloth.

When you stir up the relevant sediment from your past, you might feel worse. That doesn’t last long, and you should gain insight. However, after a while, you will discover the issue with excessive introspection. The act of labelling oneself with a self-diagnosis often does more harm than good.

“The thought process that began with a specific problem can populate your head with further concerns.”

You might be akin to people who try to fend off loneliness by populating their heads with concerns: the worries often perpetuate the loneliness. Most of us might improve our lives by dropping introspection and firing ourselves headlong into life. Perhaps this is why so many who have endured years of listening to neurotics whine would happily light their cannon.

Step Three: Recognise That You Won’t Find Wisdom in Your Navel

You’ll probably stop the inner journey before you hear the fuse crackle. You’ll realise that you won’t find more wisdom in your navel. Therefore, the third step to wisdom is the realisation you would benefit from more connections to others.

However, partly because you’ve been introspective, you might meet the kind of people that exhibit the negative consequences of self-absorption.

Narcissists have mastered the art of navel-gazing and see everything as a virgin canvas begging for their stroke. Approach them with your problem and you’ll discover they cannot subordinate themselves to listen. Imagine describing a domestic mechanical problem to a person employed to repair it. Before you’ve finished talking, they’ll say “Wow, that reminds me…” and dash off to fix their dryer. You are left with a stinging sense of invalidation and unaired laundry.

Over exposure to narcissists might tempt you to recall that the first part of the body formed in the womb is the arsehole. Narcissists can suffer from arrested development. That might explain why they are from the hand-up-the-arse school of manipulation. They will try to bend you like you’re some kind of novelty oven-glove. They don’t understand personal boundaries.

Wisdom doesn’t echo from the mouths of narcissists because their approach to others is devoid of empathy. It is important to meet narcissists because you can learn something about wisdom from those who do not possess it. They highlight the danger of taking the wrong path.

After listening to a narcissist, you might have a traumatised sense of identity. You might be gagging for your friends. They could have an answer to your problem, too.

Step Four: Realise That Friends Are Not Always Wise

When a group gets together, there will be a sizing-up and comparison of lifestyles. Based on, say, income, cheekbones and volume of voice, someone will emerge as dominant. That does not mean they are qualified to offer insight. It’s akin to getting lifestyle advice from silverback gorillas who establish their position by biting and roaring.

An interesting shortcut to either absorbing or discounting the friend’s words is to imagine a society run by that person. Try it. It can be entertaining. You’ll imagine a range of societies including, say, Afghanistan, Singapore and Goofball Island. Sometimes when you do this exercise, you will imagine a happily inert community.

Exercise caution. Some people project Iceland to disguise Syria.

Another danger of asking friends is that you meet a version of Hindsight Lad, a Marvel hero who turns up after catastrophic events. Hindsight Lad describes how things would’ve been better had they been done his way to people on the scorched earth mopping up loved ones.

So, here’s the fourth step to wisdom: recognising that friends sometimes have an agenda that can jeopardise their advice. Groupthink rarely produces wisdom. And Hindsight Lad wants you to become Circumspection Man: he wants you to be frozen in your comfort zone for the fear of disastrous consequences. And so he can continue to tell you where you went wrong.

Step Five: Beware of Gurus

Most emotional problems will demand a few steps away from entrenched routine. That might tempt you to seek outside help. You don’t think you need the professional touch. There’s nothing wrong with therapy. I should know — I charge for it.

Still, you might find it more appealing to listen to someone who has a YouTube channel. It will have better lighting, a brand, and a face that says, “Subscribe for clarity.”

Or someone with a Substack. With words that say, “Subscribe for sincerity.”

It is understandable. There can be a yearning to outsource your life, to protect your backside and avoid responsibility. That yearning can birth a massage of services, organisations, and individuals, all happy to exploit it. It is why some people will seek life-changing wisdom by going to a tent on a pier and sitting with someone who wears a purple mu-mu.

The ability to translate “woo” into moolah is easily upscaled. The charlatans ditch the mu-mu, season their oration skills with abstract nouns and pay for seizure-inducing white teeth.

They recognise that:

The halo effect + the placebo effect = 💰💰💰💰💰

Most of us realise that we are vulnerable to exploitation before we are dazzled by dentistry and buy into homoeopathy. Casting light upon bullshit can be depressing but it is important: the fifth step is the realisation that the Wizard of Oz is a hustler from Nebraska.

To worship a false messiah can arrest your journey to wisdom.

And here I hold up my hands:

I can’t tell you how to be wise.

Even on Substack.

No-one can.

Step Six: Accept the Complexity of Humanity

At this point you might despair.

Your experiences might taint your view of humanity. Despite consulting gurus and Google you are no closer to understanding your problems.

But you need not despair.

The corruptibility of the gurus exposes their humanity.

To acknowledge the complexity of humanity is to walk towards wisdom.

Humanity is messy. Less your Facebook page than your Google history.
That’s both its comedy and its truth.

That’s the beauty of curiosity and mixing with a variety of people. You flourish with a life-affirming sense of connection. By acknowledging the flaws of humanity, you realise that

“The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews.”

And that realisation can help you see the light.

Epilogue

So, here’s my last suggestion: imagine yourself in a small, dark room.

There appears to be only one source of light, behind a tiny, barred square.

You grip the bars trying to see a glimpse of the sun. With exertion, a distinct angle of the head, you are sometimes blessed with the sun’s caress. That, for a few seconds, transforms your experience. It is a kiss of hope. You decide you cannot miss the next orbit.

So, you cling to the bars. You twist your neck. The chance of light is all. To miss a moment would pitch you into despair. You could not live with yourself if you missed the light.

You stay at the bars. You don’t face the darkness of the rest of the cell. You never realise that the door at the opposite end, through the darkness, is open.

You’re not in a cell. You are free.

It’s now up to you to face the darkness.