Internet. An interesting word. Like something brought up from the deep. A net for something that has been interred, or something as yet to be interred; a holding-place for all the things we’d rather keep secret in our real lives. And yet, we like to watch, don’t we? Through a glass, darkly, we watch the world turn: a world peopled with shades and reflections, never more than a mouse-click away. A man kills himself — live, on cam. It’s disgusting, but strangely compulsive. We wonder if it was a fake. It could be a fake; anything could. But everything looks so much more real when you’re watching it on a computer screen. Thus even the things we see every day — perhaps especially those things — gain an extra significance when glimpsed through the eye of a camera.
That girl, for instance. The girl in the bright-red duffel coat who walks past my house nearly every day, windswept and oblivious to the camera’s eye that watches her. She has her habits, as do I. She knows the power of desire. She knows that the world turns not on love, or even money, but on obsession.
Obsession? Of course. We are all obsessed. Obsessed with TV; with the size of our dicks; with money and fame and the love-lives of others. This virtual — though far from virtuous — world is a reeking midden of mind-trash, mish-mash, slash; car dealerships and Viagra sales, and music and games and gossip and lies and tiny personal tragedies lost in transit down the line, waiting for someone to care, just once, waiting for someone to connect —
That’s where WeJay comes in. WebJournal, the site for all seasonings. Restricted entries for private enjoyment; public — well, for everyone else. On WeJay I can vent as I please, confess without fear of censure; be myself — or indeed, someone else — in a world where no one is quite what they seem, and where every member of every tribe is free to do what they most desire.
Tribe? Yes, everyone here has a tribe; each with its divisions and subdivisions, binary veins and capillaries branching out into a near-infinity of permutations as they distance themselves from the mainstream. The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, the pervert with his webcam. No one has to hunt alone, however far from the pack they have strayed. Everyone has a home here, a place where someone will take them in, where all their tastes are catered for —
Most people go with the popular choice. They choose vanilla every time. Vanillas are the good guys, common as Coca-Cola. Their conscience is as white as their perfect teeth; they are tall and bronzed and presentable; they eat at McDonald’s; they take out the trash; they come with a PG certificate and they’d never shoot a man in the back.
But bad guys come in a million flavours. Bad guys lie; bad guys cheat; bad guys make the heart beat faster — or sometimes come to a sudden stop. Which is why I created badguysrock: originally a WeJay community devoted to villains throughout the fictional universe; now a forum for bad guys to celebrate beyond the reach of the ethics police; to glory in their crimes; to strut; to wear their villainy with pride.
Membership is open right now; the price of admission a single post — be it a fic, an essay or just a drabble. Though if there’s something you’d like to confess, this is just the place for it: no names, no rules, no colours — but one.
No, not black, as you might expect. Black is far too limiting. Black presupposes a lack of depth. But blue is creative, melancholy. Blue is the music of the soul. And blue is the colour of our clan, embracing all shades of villainy, all flavours of unholy desire.
So far, it’s a small clan, with less than a dozen regulars.
First comes Captainbunnykiller: Andy Scott of New York. Cap’s blog is a mixture of jackass humour, pornographic fantasy and furious invective — against niggers, queers, fucktards, the fat, Christians and, most recently, the French — but I doubt he’s ever killed anything.
Next comes chrysalisbaby. Aka Chryssie Bateman, of California. This one’s a typical Body Freak — has been on a diet since she was twelve, and now weighs over three hundred pounds. Has a history of falling for vicious men. Never learns. Never will.
After that there’s ClairDeLune; Clair Mitchell, to her friends. This one’s a local; she teaches a course on creative self-expression at Malbry College (which explains her slightly superior tone and her addiction to literary psychobabble) and runs an online writers’ group as well as a sizeable fansite devoted to a certain middle-aged character actor — let us call him Angel Blue — with whom she is infatuated. Angel is an irregular choice, an actor specializing in louche individuals, damaged types, serial killers, and other assorted bad-guy roles. Not A-list, but you’d know his face. She often posts pictures of him on here. Curiously enough, he looks something like me.
Then there’s Toxic69, aka Stuart Dawson, of Leeds. Left crippled in a motorbike crash, he spends his angry life online, where no one needs to pity him; and Purepwnage9, of Fife, who lives for Warcraft and Second Life, oblivious of the fact that his own life is surely but swiftly slipping away; plus any number of lurkers and irregulars — JennyTricks; BombNumber20, Jesusismycopilot, and so on, who exhibit a diverting range of responses to our various entries, from admiration to outrage; from cheeriness to profanity.
And then, of course, there’s Albertine. Definitely not like the rest, there’s a confessional tone to her entries that I find more than a little promising, a hint of danger, a dark undertone, a style perhaps more akin to my own. And she lives right here in the Village, no more than a dozen streets away —
Coincidence?
Not quite. Of course, I have been watching her. Especially so since my brother’s death. Not with malice, but with curiosity, even a measure of envy. She seems so self-possessed. So calm. So safely cocooned in her little world, so unaware of what’s happening. Her online posts are so intimate, so naked and so oddly naïve that you’d never believe she was one of us, a bad guy among bad guys. Her fingers on the piano keys danced like little dervishes. I remember that, and her gentle voice, and her name, which smelt of roses.
The poet Rilke was killed by a rose. How very Sturm und Drang of him. A scratch with a thorn that got infected; a poison gift that keeps on giving. Personally, I don’t see the appeal. I feel more kinship with the orchid tribe: subversives of the plant world, clinging to life wherever they can, subtle and insidious. Roses are so commonplace, with their whorls of sickening bubblegum pink; their scheming scent; their unwholesome leaves, their sly little thorns that poke at the heart —
O rose, thou art sick —
Still, aren’t we all?
4
You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy.
Posted at: 23.30 on Monday, January 28
Status: restricted
Mood: contemplative
Listening to: Radiohead: ‘Creep’
Call me B.B. Everyone does. No one but the police and the bank ever use my real name. I’m forty-two and five foot eight; I have mousy hair, blue eyes and I’ve lived here in Malbry all my life.
Malbry — pronounced Maw-bry. Even the word smells of shit. But I am unusually sensitive to words, to their sounds and resonances. That’s why I don’t have an accent now, and have lost my childhood stammer. The predominant trend here in Malbry is for exaggerated vowels and clumsy glottals, coating every word in a grimy sheen. You can hear them on the estate all the time: teenage girls with scraped-back hair, shouting hiyaaa in shades of synthetic strawberry. The boys are less articulate, mouthing freak and loser at me as I pass, in half-broken voices that yodel and boom in notes of lager and locker-room sweat. Most of the time I don’t hear them. My life has a permanent soundtrack, provided by my iPod, into which I have downloaded more than twenty thousand tracks and forty-two playlists, one for every year of my life, each with a specific theme —